


Pete in Boots

by earlgreytea68



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Cat/Human Hybrids, M/M, Puss in Boots Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 04:28:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18652912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Patrick has never had anything to love, and not much to look forward to — until a stray cat shows up, bearing a hat and a whole new life.





	Pete in Boots

**Author's Note:**

> For the Peterick fairy tale challenge! I went with Puss in Boots, as you can see. I'm surprised how little I had to change about that fairy tale, it's really quite the story! Thank you as ever to the organizers of this challenge, and to Aja for reading this over and also for writing the summary for me. 
> 
> TW for brief, non-graphic animal cruelty.
> 
> There's a playlist! You can find it here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4JzU95iYhQcwArj0MExzWV

Once upon a time, Patrick got totally screwed.

Patrick’s kind of used to it by now. His father’s an asshole and his brothers aren’t any better, and his mother always just says _yes, dear_ to whoever’s complaining to her at the moment. But still, this is an _epic_ amount of screwing.

Dad decides he’s going to give them their inheritances, which is a weird thing to do anyway, since Dad’s not dead.

Patrick points that out. “Why are we doing this now? You’re not dead yet.”

“Patrick,” his brother Tom says. “Stop talking.”

Because that’s just how it goes in his family.

“Yes, stop talking,” his father says absently, and then resumes his speech about sons carrying on their father’s work and blah blah blah.

Patrick stands in the bright sunshine by their mill and watches the river slide by and wonders, as always, whether it goes somewhere better than _here_.

“And that is why,” Dad says, building up to his proclamation, drawing himself up to his full height (which isn’t very full), “I shall leave to Tom...my mill.” 

“ _Yes_!” exclaims Tom, and does a really terrible strutting chicken walk thing that’s probably supposed to be a dance of victory, or something.

Patrick wrinkles his nose at it and thinks that he didn’t want the stupid mill anyway. Patrick’s not staying here. Patrick is _going_. _Anywhere_.

“And to Harry...” Dad says, laying his hand on Harry’s shoulder.

Harry visible quivers with excitement, goofy grin on his face, and Patrick rolls his eyes.

“To Harry I leave...my mules,” Dad pronounces.

“Oh, wow!” cries Harry. “The mules! Awesome!”

Whatever, Patrick didn’t want the mules, either. I mean, sure, he could have used the mules to _go somewhere_ , but it’s fine, Dad’s going to give him...something else. It doesn’t matter.

Except that Dad turns as if the whole spectacle is over and done with.

“Hey,” Patrick protests. “What do I get?”

Dad looks at him, his eyes vaguely unfocused. “Oh. Yes. Hmm. And to...my youngest son,” he says.

“Patrick,” Patrick says flatly. “My name is _Patrick_.”

“Right, right,” Dad says, waving his hand around like Patrick’s name isn’t important. “To you I am leaving...” Dad looks around him, and then leans down and grabs the mangy gray tomcat who’s been stealing food out of their kitchen scraps all summer but is apparently too lazy to ever catch any mice in exchange, because they are overrun with mice. The cat yowls in indignation at being picked up. “The cat,” Dad finishes, and holds the cat out at Patrick.

“What,” says Patrick, staring at the cat in his father’s hands.

The cat twitches its nose and tries its best to claw at Dad.

“Wow,” Tom says, openly laughing hysterically.

“Aww, a little pussy for Patty,” Harry coos.

The cat yowls again, its tail lashing back and forth.

“What the fuck,” Patrick says, “that’s not even our cat, that’s some sketchy stray that’s probably got fleas and stuff.”

The cat hisses at Patrick.

“You,” Dad tells him coldly, “are an ungrateful son, and that is why I don’t bother to remember your name.” Dad drops the cat to the grass and stalks off toward the house.

The cat looks up at Patrick and blinks its yellow eyes.

Tom and Harry are literally collapsed in mirth.

Patrick says, “Fuck this,” and stalks off in the direction that will take him farthest away from his fucking family.

***

Patrick knows the forest around the mill like the back of his hand, and he especially knows the spot on the bluff that looks out over the road that runs along the wending river. From this spot, Patrick can see all the way to place where the road emerges from the hazy blue hills in the west, to the place where it disappears in the thicker pine tree forests in the east. People don’t come along this road very often, and when they do they don’t stop, they just keep moving. Patrick has, for as long as he can remember, wanted to be one of those people, those people who trot on their pretty horses right past the mill, who don’t even spare it a glance. It’s beneath their notice. They don’t need to think about the boring lives of people who own a boring mill. They’re thinking of the places at the end of the road, where _things happen_. Exciting things. Things that require horses instead of mules. Things that sometimes even require _carriages_ , coaches that swing by and Patrick tries to imagine who could possibly need to ride in a _coach_ , hidden from view.

Patrick climbs up to the bluff now and curls up on the mossy rock, under the drooping willow, where he’s sat a million times before, and he _doesn’t cry_. It would be such a stupid thing to cry over. It doesn’t matter. Why should it matter? He’s leaving this place, _any day now_ , he’s just going to...set out on the road and find a better place, that’s what he’s going to do, so it super doesn’t matter that his dad doesn’t even know his name and left him a stray cat who showed up two months ago, like, that _doesn’t matter_.

Patrick’s view of the road is blurred because it’s dusty outside and not because he’s got tears in his eyes or something.

And that’s when the stupid cat shows up, standing by the boulder and looking at him, tail swishing.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Patrick complains, and tries to pretend he isn’t sniffling. “Go away. I don’t want a cat.”

The cat leaps up onto the boulder with him.

Patrick says, “Come on, you’re going to get your fleas and stuff all over me.”

The cat curls up on Patrick’s chest and looks at him steadily.

Patrick should shove the thing off of him. He says, “It doesn’t matter, right? Like, who gives a fuck? This is stupid.”

The cat butts at his chin and then starts purring.

“I don’t want a cat,” Patrick says again, but the cat is very warm and soft when Patrick hugs it closer and presses his face into its thick dark fur. 

***

The thing about the cat is: he totally doesn’t want it. It’s so stupid. What’s he going to do with a cat?

But the cat is...kind of nice to have around.

Patrick doesn’t get why all of a sudden it sticks by his side, as if it knows that it’s been bequeathed to him, but the cat is a constant shadow as he goes through his days. It sits in a sunbeam while Patrick mucks out the mules’ stalls, licking its paws daintily. It trots behind him while Patrick feeds the chickens and makes a single half-hearted pounce at a chick before Patrick gives it a stern look and it backs away. It curls up and snoozes while Patrick hangs out the laundry. It wends its way around Patrick’s feet when he’s trying to carry water up from the well and he curses at it.

But its company is...nice. Which is weird, because it’s not like the thing talks or anything. But it’s nice to have it constantly nearby. When Patrick is chopping up carrots and potatoes for dinner, the cat sits curled on his lap, purring, and that’s the nicest of all.

“Get that filthy animal outside,” Patrick’s mother says, appalled, when she finds them like that.

“It’s not that dirty,” Patrick protests weakly, looking at the cat. It _is_ that dirty. 

The cat opens one eye and gives him an offended look, like it knows what Patrick is thinking.

“Where did that thing come from anyway?” Mom demands, and shoves it unceremoniously off of Patrick’s lap.

“Hey!” Patrick exclaims, and the cat screeches in annoyance, curling its way into a curlicue around Patrick’s feet.

“That’s Patty’s inheritance,” Tom says tauntingly, coming in from his day of “hard work” at the mill.

“Pussy, pussy, pussy,” Harry chants, and flutters his fingers at Patrick.

“What is that?” Patrick asks sourly. “Is that supposed to be funny or something?”

Tom and Harry laugh and laugh.

Mom says, “What a useless inheritance, where’d you get that?”

“From Dad,” Patrick answers scathingly.

“Waste of everyone’s time, and a waste of my space. Now put the thing outside or you won’t have any dinner tonight.”

The cat is a stupid thing to take a stand over, considering he doesn’t even like the cat. But Patrick leans down and gathers the cat in his arms and says, “Fine,” and stomps out of the house.

The cat looks over Patrick’s shoulder and delivers a final _mrow_ that translates as _so there_ , in Patrick’s view.

Patrick carries the cat up to his bluff and then lets it down. When he sits on the boulder, the cat leaps up into his lap immediately and purrs.

Patrick scratches it behind its ears, which it seems to like, since its purrs get louder. “You’re the one thing I’ve ever been given,” Patrick says, “so of course they’ve got to make a big deal about you. Why should they care if you sit there while I do all the work for the whole fucking household? They’re the worst.”

The cat dips its head to change the angle of Patrick’s scratching fingers, but it could also have been a nod.

Patrick decides it’s a nod. “It’s okay. I’ll sneak back in when they’re asleep and get us some food.”

The cat’s purrs seem to approve of that plan.

“You could catch yourself a mouse,” Patrick suggests. “You don’t need to rely on me for your food. We’ve got a ton of mice around here.”

The cat opens its yellow eyes into unimpressed slits.

“You know,” Patrick says, “you _are_ kind of dirty.”

The cat nips at his fingers.

“And what happened to your ear?” Patrick asks, and touches the tip of his finger to it delicately. There’s a tiny gouge in the cat’s right ear, a testament to some battle somewhere.

The cat shakes its head, dislodging Patrick’s finger.

“Okay,” Patrick agrees. “We don’t have to talk about it. Pasts are stupid things to talk about anyway. Let’s talk about the future. In the future, when I hitch a ride out of this place, I’ll be sure to take you with me. How’s that?”

The cat listens raptly, whiskers twitching a little.

“We’ll get out together,” Patrick says, and strokes his hand down the cat’s back. “Once I’ve given you a bath or something, like, then you’ll be a totally respectable-looking cat.”

The cat narrows its eyes and swishes its tail.

“And then everyone will totally want to know all about us, right? We’ll go someplace really interesting and we’ll tell people only the best stories. We’ll tell them we’re...pirates, right?”

The cat flicks its ears as if to say _go on_.

Patrick warms to his subject. “You used to be my pirate cat on a ship somewhere, and you lost that bit of your ear when a sword clipped you, and then I removed us from the pirate life for your own protection. Or maybe we’re powerful wizards, right? And you’re my familiar. I don’t really know what that is but it’s a thing witches have, I’m pretty sure, so that’s what you can be. Or maybe I’m the long-lost son of a prince and I’m trying to get home to my beautiful castle and my gorgeous princess wife and you’re my spoiled kitten who longs for the days of bowls of cream and fattened canaries.” Patrick sighs and pets his cat and looks up and down the road. It’s completely deserted. And Patrick and his mangy stray cat are decidedly not pirates or wizards or royalty. “I don’t know. Eventually. Someday.”

The cat tips its head to rasp its tongue over Patrick’s hand. 

“You’re a nice cat,” Patrick says softly, and this whole thing is _so stupid_ but he presses a gentle kiss into the soft fur on the top of the cat’s head, and the cat purrs and purrs at him.

***

Patrick gets used to his cat. It’s always there. He only has to turn his head to find it at any given moment. And if, whenever he spots it, he finds himself smiling, well, whatever.

The cat sleeps with him out in the hayloft, and Patrick used to hate sleeping in the hayloft, prone to bugs and the terrible musty smell of damp hay and the way it’s unbearably hot in summer and unbearably cold in winter. But the cat curls up right next to him and purrs all night and the vibrations soothe Patrick to sleep, even through the most violent of thunderstorms when the entire barn shakes and rain seeps through the chinks between the wood and Patrick hugs the cat close, squeezing as the thunder endlessly rumbles. The cat might make a small _mrow_ of protest but usually just butts its head against Patrick’s cheek in something that feels like comfort and tries to purr louder than the storm.

And Patrick—Patrick sings to his cat. And Patrick doesn’t sing to _anything_. But in the golden dusks when he sits with the cat on his bluff and waits for something to come down the road, he sings it the songs that are always in Patrick’s head, the melodies that drift through his brain constantly. He sings them softly, hesitantly, because his voice is terrible, but the cat always stills, not a whisker in motion, and watches him, ears pitched toward him, as if it _likes_ his singing.

Patrick is aware that he’s lonely. He’s not an idiot. He knows this about himself. He’s aware that he's making all of this up, that this is just another story he’s telling himself to get through his days, that the cat doesn’t _like_ him, that the cat doesn’t want to be near him just to be near him, that the cat doesn’t nuzzle him out of affection, that the cat doesn’t care about his stupid songs. But the pretending is nice. Patrick’s a pro at telling himself only the best lies. That his cat likes being _his cat_ is just another one.

At night, in the dark in the hayloft, when Patrick used to be all alone, Patrick presses his face into the fur of his purring cat, and Patrick says words he’s never said before in his life. He’s not sure if he means them but he’s always imagined saying them, in one of his imagined futures, and he wants to know how they feel. So he lifts his head and whispers into the cat’s scarred right ear, “I love you.”

The cat’s purring pauses, and then starts back up again at what feels like double-time. But that’s probably just Patrick’s imagination, too.

***

In the morning, when Patrick wakes, the cat is gone.

Patrick sits in his deserted hayloft and feels like the stupidest person on the entire planet. Of _course_ he doesn’t love a _cat_. And of _course_ the first thing he says he loves would immediately leave.

“Of fucking course, Patrick,” Patrick mutters to himself, as he climbs down from the hayloft to start his day of chores.

The chores seem insurmountable without his cat. It’s so stupid. It’s a fucking cat. Patrick’s been doing these chores his entire life without a cat, so why should he care that the cat’s run away?

“Where’s your kitty cat?” Tom asks him mockingly.

“Meow, meow,” says Harry, darting around behind Tom and licking his hand. Patrick supposes that’s supposed to look like his cat licking its paws. It doesn’t.

“It’s around,” Patrick says, because he’s too humiliated to admit the cat ran away. But he knows he’s flushed with embarrassment. He tries to focus on sweeping out the mill’s courtyard.

Tom gasps. “Did your kitty run away? Aw, Patty, how tragic!”

Harry clutches his stomach, he’s laughing so hard. “You can’t even keep a mangy stray cat. Everything thinks you’re awful and boring.”

“That’s not true,” Patrick says, but it sounds ridiculous even to his own ears, because it _is_ true, he couldn’t even keep a mangy stray cat.

“Uh-huh,” says Harry, still laughing at him.

“Poor Patty’s missing pussy,” Tom says, and shakes his head. “Now you’ve got no inheritance at all. Whatever will you do once we kick you out of here?”

“He’ll probably cry like a little baby,” says Harry. “Wah, wah.” Harry rubs his fists into his eyes.

They’re not going to kick him out of here, Patrick thinks furiously, because he is going to _leave_ , just as soon as something comes down the road, just as soon as he can find a way out, they can’t kick him out if he goes first, he’s totally going to go first, he’s going to take off just like his cat.

Patrick sits on his bluff and looks up and down the road and curses himself. “You’re a fucking coward,” he says, because he is. He wants to leave and wants to leave and he never leaves, and he should leave, he should totally go see what’s in the pine tree forest, or what lies beyond the blue hills, he should just _do it_.

Tom and Harry are right, he’s basically a little baby who’s never going to do anything with his life because he’ll just stay here mucking out stalls and cleaning up after millworkers, and no one is ever going to come down the road, and Patrick’s never getting out of here, and even his cat knew that and left without him.

And then, as the sun is setting behind the hills, as Patrick is sitting on the boulder with his legs pulled up and his lips resting against his knees and his gaze focused on the disappearing sun heading on its way to see things he will never see—that's when the cat shows up.

It trots over to the boulder with something in its mouth that’s practically bigger than it is. The thing is dragging behind the cat, sending up a cloud of dust as it comes. Then it drops whatever’s in its mouth and sits back, watching Patrick expectantly.

Patrick stares at it, and then shifts to look at the offering. Most cats would bring mice or birds, but his cat has never shown any interest in mice and only a passing interest in birds every once in a while. So Patrick doesn’t quite know what to expect.

It’s a...hat.

Patrick unfolds and reaches down to pick it up. A...pretty grand hat. It’s bedraggled from the cat dragging it but he shakes it back into shape, revealing a magnificently wide brim and an ostentatious feather curling over it. Patrick’s never seen a hat like it.

Patrick looks from the hat to the cat, who comes over to rub its head against Patrick’s shins.

“You brought me a hat?” he says.

“Mrowr,” says the cat.

Patrick doesn’t really know what to make of it. But, for lack of anything better to do, he puts the hat on. And, actually, it’s kind of cool. It feels grand, like the kind of hat that would be worn by someone riding a pretty horse, or maybe someone in a carriage. The hat makes him feel like, underneath its brim, there’s a whole new world and a whole new Patrick. 

Patrick tosses his head a little, feeling the feather bob above him, and looks at the cat.

“So?” Patrick asks. “How do I look?”

The cat tilts its head and swishes its tail and butts against Patrick’s shins again.

Patrick laughs. He feels kind of absurd with this hat on but he also feels...better. His cat came back, with a ridiculous hat for him. A hat for _adventuring_. A hat for a pirate or a wizard or a prince. A hat for a whole new world and a whole new Patrick.

Patrick leans down and picks the cat up and says to it, “This is a foolish hat. You’re a silly cat.” He kisses its fuzzy nose gently. “Thank you so much for it.” He adds in a softer voice, “Thanks for coming back.”

The cat rubs against Patrick’s jaw and purrs loudly.

***

The next day Patrick’s actually whistling as he does his chores. It’s a blustery day, storms on the way, but his cat came back and purred next to him all night, and Patrick’s wearing his fancy new hat with its feather plume and he feels like it’s a good day.

He should have fucking known.

Tom says, “Hang on. Where’d you get that hat?”

“Found it,” Patrick says simply, refusing to be goaded, and keeps hanging up the laundry. The cat is curled up in the basket of clothes, watching with its yellow eyes. Patrick’s started to think of them as golden, watching them catch the light at night in the hayloft.

“Found it where?” asks Tom incredulously.

“Around,” says Patrick.

“You found a hat like _that_ around—"

Patrick knocks Tom’s hand away when he reaches for the hat, clasping the hat to his head. “Don’t touch it.”

Tom scowls at him. “You think if anyone around here should have a hat like that, it’s _you_?”

Patrick backs away, a hand clapped to the top of his head to keep the hat in place. “Yes,” he says stubbornly. “It’s _mine_.”

“What’s going on over here?” Harry asks lazily, coming over to stand by Tom. He’s eating an apple, looking disinterested.

“Look at Patrick’s hat,” sneers Tom.

Harry does. “Huh. Where’d you get that?”

“He says he found it,” says Tom scathingly.

“I did,” Patrick insists.

“You must have stolen it,” Tom says. “Give it back right now.”

“I’m not giving it to you,” Patrick says. “It’s _mine_.”

“Harry,” Tom says, narrowing his eyes at Patrick. “Don’t you think Patrick should give me the hat? I am the oldest son, after all. I’m the one who’s going to be the mill owner.”

“As if it’s any big deal to be a _mill owner_ ,” Patrick retorts. “Wake up, Tom. It’s a stupid mill in a stupid place.”

“You little asshole,” snarls Tom, and launches himself at Patrick.

Patrick steps back instinctively and then suddenly a yowling dark gray blur shoots through the air and attaches itself to Tom’s leg, claws digging in.

“Ow, what the _fuck_ ,” shouts Tom, shaking his leg to try to dislodge the cat, who yowls again and hangs on tight.

Harry forgets about Patrick to fuss over Tom. “What is it, Tom? What’s wrong?”

“It’s this _stupid fucking cat_ of his,” Tom bites out furiously.

“Get off of Tom!” Harry says to the cat, and aims a kick at it.

Patrick shoves Harry, throwing his kick offline, so he kicks Tom’s leg instead of the cat.

“Did you just shove me?” Harry fumes at him, and shoves back.

The cat darts over to dig its claws into Harry’s leg, but Tom leans over and grabs it by the scruff of its neck, pulling it off. It yowls and swipes out, clawing at air.

“Stupid cat,” Tom spits at it.

“Let it go!” Patrick commands, running at Tom.

Harry pushes him to the ground hard enough that he’s winded for a second, and by the time he sits up Tom is walking away, still holding the outraged cat by the scruff of its neck, still muttering about the cat, Harry bounding behind him.

Patrick grabs the hat that fell off his head and shoves it back on and dashes after Tom and Harry. “Hey! Give it back to me!”

“Fat chance,” Harry shoots back over his shoulder.

Patrick takes a wild swing at him but he doesn’t know how to fight and Harry easily shoves him back again.

“Take the hat!” Patrick says desperately, trying to run at Tom again, but Harry blocks him again. “You can have the hat, just give me back the cat.”

“I’ll have both,” Tom informs him spitefully, and then says to Harry, “Keep him back,” and suddenly Harry’s got Patrick’s arms locked behind him.

“Let go,” Patrick says, in a panicked rage, twisting, trying to kick _something_ on Harry that will make him let go.

He’s so busy doing that that he doesn’t notice what Tom’s doing with the cat until Tom whistles, “Hey, Patty. Want to say good-bye?”

And Tom’s holding a sack, tied tight, inside of which is a screeching, writhing outline of a cat.

Patrick blinks, wide-eyed. “What are you doing? Let it go. _Let it go_.” He struggles wildly and Harry holds him tight and then Tom flings the sack into the river.

Patrick stares in shock as the sack hits the water, tumbles over itself, and then starts bobbing downstream, caught in the current.

“ _Cat_!” he screams.

“You didn’t even name the thing?” Tom asks, and he and Harry start laughing, which enables Patrick to break free.

He dashes to the river, shouting, “Cat! Cat!” and the sack is still churning along, taking on water, getting lower and lower. “Hang on!” he calls. “I’m coming!” and then he plunges into the river without a second thought.

The thing is: Patrick can’t swim. It’s so stupid, because he’s lived by this river his entire life, but no one’s ever taught him how to swim, he’s never learned, and the water immediately takes his breath away. The current is strong and swift and it tugs Patrick along, he goes under and struggles up, sputtering and gasping, his hat weirdly still on his head, weighed down heavily, feather dripping down and obscuring his vision. He pushes at the feather and can just make out the sack with the cat in it, impossibly far ahead of him, he’s never going to reach it.

The river keeps pushing him forward but the sack is moving faster, and he keeps slowing himself down out of fearful instinct, dragging his feet along the bottom to try to get purchase whenever he can manage it, struggling to keep his head above water. Everything is chaos and Patrick imagines he can still hear the cat yowling for him, but that must be in his head, because his ears are filled with the rushing of the water all around him, and Patrick looks for the sack and looks for the sack and sees the moment when it goes under and doesn’t resurface.

Patrick tries to find where it sank, flailing around desperately in the water, with no real idea if he’s ever anywhere near the spot where it went under. He has no concept of how long he’s been in this water, how far he’s traveled, just that eventually there’s a bend in the river and he’s not a skilled enough swimmer to follow it, instead getting pushed painfully up onto the shore, choking up river water until he’s gagging, and then he sprawls, exhausted, on the riverbank. His hat washes up right next to him, soggy and misshapen.

Patrick’s not sure how long he lays there, stunned, catching his breath. Eventually he sits up and looks up and down the river. There is no sign of the sack, but he calls for his cat anyway. “Cat!” he yells. “Cat!”

A few birds tweet from the trees around him, but otherwise there is silence. The only thing moving is the river’s inexorable current.

Patrick drags himself to his feet. He feels bruised all over from being pushed along the river’s edge and bottom, and he’s unpleasantly soaked, water squelching out of his shoes. Patrick leans down and picks up his hat. Its feather has been snapped. It no longer arcs jauntily over the brim, instead swinging sadly next to it. Patrick doesn’t care. He puts the hat on and looks up and down the riverbank. He knows which direction home is, and he goes in the opposite direction.

Patrick walks through nightfall, walks until it’s pitch-black and he’s shivering with cold, trudging along, and he probably would have kept walking until he just dropped and died somewhere on this river, except that the storms that had been threatening all day break, thunder crashing over his head and lightning illuminating the forest all around him in sharp relief, and Patrick _hates_ thunderstorms. He’s numb and shocked and exhausted but he hates thunderstorms with an instinct so automatic that it kicks in even through his half-dead state.

He miraculously finds a cave and staggers into it, out of the storm. It’s not great, the thunder’s still crashing and the lightning’s still flashing, but at least he’s not out in it.

The cave isn’t big. Patrick slinks as close to the back wall as he can get, as far away from the storm as he can get, and it’s not very far. He takes off his hat and curls up into a ball next to it, keeping the hat in his sight, since it’s the only thing he has left and he doesn’t want to lose it. He closes his hand around the feather and thinks about the cat bringing him the hat and how happy he was. And how he let Tom throw the cat into the river to drown, and he didn’t do _anything_ to stop it, he should have done _anything_ , he should have run away with the cat ages ago, instead he killed his cat, his only friend, the only thing he had to love, the only thing that had ever seemed to love him, or at least like him, and Patrick had gotten it _killed_.

Patrick turns his face into his arm and cries and cries, cries with all of his broken heart, for his poor cat who should have left Patrick a long time ago and instead Patrick got it killed and Patrick _misses_ it, misses the purring and the warmth and the company while the thunder is endless outside.

“Oh, Patrick,” a voice says, achingly tender and oh-so-gentle, not like any voice Patrick’s ever heard before, and Patrick finds himself being held, soft and sure, arms around him, pulling him in close. Patrick should have so many questions but also Patrick’s never had anything like this before, and Patrick is alone and sad and someone is _holding_ him, someone is smoothing a hand so carefully over his hair, someone is murmuring, “Shh, shh” into his ear, he is being _soothed_. Patrick clutches at the comfort, closes his hands into fistfuls of the stranger’s shirt, turns his face into the stranger’s shoulder and sobs. “Don’t cry, Patrick,” the stranger says. “Please don’t cry. I’m right here.” Patrick feels the oddest sensation, like a kiss has been brushed onto his head. It’s impossible.

...As impossible as someone in this cave with him, _knowing his name_ and _comforting him_.

Patrick cries himself out but keeps his face pressed into the stranger’s shoulder. As soon as he moves it, he’s going to have to break this spell, he’s going to have to lose this comfort, and Patrick doesn’t want to, Patrick wants to keep this forever. He takes uneven breaths and the stranger keeps stroking his hair and breathing out, “Shh, shh,” in little whooshes of exhalation against Patrick’s ear.

Patrick mumbles eventually, “How do you know my name?”

The stranger draws in a breath. “So,” he says, heartily. “This is a funny story.”

Patrick gets the courage to pick his head up, and finds himself looking into golden eyes. He blinks, uncertain, frowning into them, because surely he’s imagining that they look a bit...feline.

Movement draws his eyes up, to where, nestled in the thicket of dark spiky hair on this man’s head, are two dark gray cat ears. The right one has a gouge in it.

Patrick gasps and scrambles away, as far as he can get in this tiny cave. The man across from him watches him steadily with his gold cat eyes, and with his tail swishing.

He _has a tail_.

Patrick stares at it for a second, then looks back at the man’s face. “I’m dead,” he realizes flatly.

The man smiles at him. He’s got a nice smile. Patrick’s never seen such a nice smile before in his life. “You’re not dead.”

“You’ve...” Patrick chokes on air, then tries again. “You’ve got a tail.”

The man looks down at it, as if just noticing it, and it flicks up toward him. “I do,” he confirms, and looks back at Patrick. “You’re not dead. Neither am I.”

Patrick just blinks at him.

The man reaches out and picks up Patrick’s hat with a thoughtful _hmm_. “Poor feather. I’ll have to steal you a new one. You look good in this hat.”

Patrick closes his eyes, assuming that he must be hallucinating, and when he opens up his eyes this man will have disappeared.

Nope, he’s still there.

“What is happening?” Patrick asks faintly.

“Not to state the obvious,” says the man, “but I’m no ordinary cat.”

“You’re not a cat at all,” Patrick points out, strangled.

The man smiles. “Not at the moment. Although, as you’ve noted, I never really lose all of it.” His tail curls toward Patrick. “You can pet it, you know.”

“I’m not petting your tail,” Patrick says, “are you out of your mind?”

“No, I just like to get my tail petted. Whatever.” The man shrugs.

“Hang on,” says Patrick. He feels like he’s starting to get his feet under him, figuratively speaking. Literally, his feet are still encased in soggy shoes and fucking uncomfortable. “Hang the fuck on.” Patrick reaches out and brushes a fingertip over the scarred right cat ear.

It flicks away from him. “Careful,” the man says. “They’re ears, you know.”

Patrick scowls at him, and then Patrick shoves him. “You _asshole_ ,” is what he says.

“Ow,” says the man, rubbing at his shoulder, and then he pouts. “I thought you’d be happy to see me. Weren’t you just crying over me?”

“I thought you were a _cat_!” Patrick cries. “You let me think you were a _cat_!”

“Well, I don’t ordinarily go around introducing myself as a man with a tail, look at the reaction it gets,” says the man.

“I _said_ things to you!” Patrick realizes, shocked. “I _sang_ to you!” Patrick wants to die of mortification.

“Yes,” the man says, and smiles. “Your voice is so lovely.”

“My voice is... What?”

“Your voice is fantastic.”

“It’s... What are you talking about?”

“You’re sitting here having a conversation with the cat you thought drowned in the river, and the thing you’ve expressed the most confusion about is the fact that you have a lovely voice,” the man smirks at him.

Patrick gets them off the topic of his voice. “You lied to me! I thought you died! How did you get out of that sack?”

The man leans closer to him and crooks his finger, and Patrick leans forward as well, tipping his head for a secret. The man whispers, “You may have noticed: I’m a little bit magic.”

Patrick shakes his head and says again, “I thought you were dead,” and he’s furious with this weird cat-person thing, but also apparently his cat is not dead, and Patrick suddenly throws himself onto the man who was his cat, or whatever, and hugs him tightly, burying his face in his neck. He misses the soft gray fur but there’s something very similar to hugging his cat about all this. Patrick can’t put his finger on it but he _knows_ he’s hugging the same entity.

And that’s even before the man starts purring.

Patrick pulls back, surprised.

“Sorry,” the man says, looking embarrassed, around the purrs. “I can’t really control that as much as I would like.”

“It’s okay,” Patrick says vaguely. “I mean...” This is _his cat_. As a human. A...kind of really attractive human. Is his cat. “Huh,” says Patrick.

“I’m sorry it took so long for me to track you down. I’m sorry you thought I was dead for so long. I was trying to get to you as fast as I could but I get disoriented when I have to change form _and_ location all at once and I didn’t expect you to be so far away from where I left you.”

Patrick shakes his head and presses his ear to the man’s chest, listening to the purring as it vibrates along.

Patrick closes his eyes and says, “I’m still not sure I’m not dead, but okay, sure, I’ll go along with this weird death-hallucination I’m having.”

“It’s not a death-hallucination,” says the man, sounding amused, and rubs behind Patrick’s ear like Patrick’s the cat.

Patrick wishes he could purr, too, that’s just how he feels at the moment. He rubs his head against the man’s chest and the man’s purring ratchets up.

Outside there’s still a storm raging and Patrick doesn’t even care. Patrick rests against this strange man, eyes closed, so impossibly comfortable he can’t stand it. He doesn’t realize he’s sleeping until the man wakes him up, shifting to get them both on the floor of the cave. The man tucks up against Patrick exactly the way his cat used to, and Patrick scritches his fingers through the man’s hair and around his cat ears, sleepy and automatic, and listens to the resulting purr.

“Hey,” he mumbles, “does this mean you have a name?”

His cat answers, “Yeah, my name is Pete.”

***

In the morning, Patrick wakes up, and there’s a cat-person curled next to him.

So apparently that wasn’t a dream.

Pete the cat-person is watching him with his gold feline eyes, the tip of his tail batting rhythmically against the ground.

“Hi,” Pete says.

“You’re still a thing that’s here,” says Patrick.

“I’m still a thing that’s here,” confirms Pete.

Patrick doesn’t say anything for a little while. He just lays there looking at Pete.

And then his stomach growls, reminding him that it’s been...a while...since he’s eaten.

Pete says, “When’s the last time you ate?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick says. “Before everything happened.” _Before I watched you get tied up into a sack and drowned in the river_.

“Let’s find you some food,” Pete says, and gets to his feet. He gathers up a large, dark blue coat and a hat, big-brimmed like Patrick’s but utterly featherless. He carries both of them outside with him.

“I don’t want to sound picky,” Patrick says, sticking his own hat on his head, broken feather and all, and following Pete out of the cave, “but I’m not going to eat mice.”

“You’re right,” says Pete, as he starts walking confidently. “You sound picky. You’d eat mice if you were starving to death.”

“I’m not starving to death,” Patrick says. “Don’t be melodramatic.” Patrick is behind Pete as they walk. Pete’s tail swishes back and forth hypnotically. 

“In a few hours, I bet the mice start sounding good to you,” remarks Pete.

“I’m just going to point out that I have never once seen you catch a mouse,” says Patrick. “I don’t even think you can.”

Pete stops walking and gives Patrick an indignant look. “Wow,” he says. “I take offense at that.”

“Can you catch a mouse?” Patrick asks.

“That is neither here nor there,” Pete says haughtily.

“Uh-huh,” says Patrick drily.

“I could catch a mouse if it were not utterly beneath me to catch a mouse,” Pete explains. “What would you like for breakfast, my lord?”

“My lord?” echoes Patrick, startled.

“Come along, good sir,” Pete continues, taking Patrick’s hand and dragging him. “I shall locate for you freshly baked bread dripping with butter. Porridge that is drowning in sugar. Coffee so dark and deep it’s like the eyes of a lover.”

Patrick’s stomach rumbles angrily. “You’re not helping matters,” Patrick tells Pete.

“Yes, I am,” says Pete. “This way. Come on.”

“How do you know where we’re going? Have you been here before?”

“A thing you should know,” Pete says, “is that it would be a waste of everyone’s time to use my superior cat senses to catch us mice, and a mark of my utter genius to use them to find us...” Pete steps out past the next tree and gestures. “A farmhouse.”

Patrick stares. A farm! It seems so much better than a mill.

“Here,” Pete says. He’s put his hat on, hiding his ears, and pulled his coat on as well, so his tail is now curled up and hidden beneath its long folds. Pete reaches out and adjusts Patrick’s hat on his head. “Follow my lead, okay?”

“Your lead?” Patrick says, and then hurries to catch up when Pete starts confidently cutting across the fields to the little house. It’s _white_. “How is the house white?” Patrick asks.

“It’s painted,” Pete says.

“ _Painted_ ,” Patrick echoes in awe, because he’s only ever heard of paint in small quantities, and then, “They had so much paint they painted the whole thing?”

“Some people have money,” Pete says.

“Where do you get that much paint?” Patrick says.

“Shh,” Pete says, because a woman has come outside and is watching their approach with frank interest.

The woman is beautiful, but maybe that’s just because Patrick can’t remember the last time he saw a woman who wasn’t his mother. He’s never allowed to go into town with Dad and Tom and Harry. The woman waves at them cheerfully and says, “Hello. Are you lost?”

Pete executes the kind of bow that Patrick’s only read about in tales about courtiers that he found once hidden at the back of a drawer and he smuggled out of the house to read. If Patrick tried that, he’d look ridiculous, but Pete looks elegant and sure of himself, even without taking his hat off.

“Indeed, fair mademoiselle,” he says, “we are lost.” He’s not actually purring but his tone of voice is close to it. “We have had a grave misfortune. My master, the Marquis of Carabas—" Pete indicates Patrick “--he has lost his cloak. And damaged his hat. And his horse ran away. My horse, too. With all of our belongings. All of the jewels we were traveling with, alas, gone, gone!” exclaims Pete dramatically.

Patrick is lifting his eyebrows at Pete in disbelief that he would expect anyone to believe this stupid story...

...and then the woman believes this stupid story.

“Oh, my goodness!” she exclaims, and when Patrick looks at her her hand has fluttered to her mouth in horror. “My lord Marquis! How tragic! I’m so sorry!”

“Um,” says Patrick, caught off-guard.

“You must forgive him, mademoiselle,” Pete says. “He’s still in shock.”

“And no wonder!” says the woman. “How awful. Come in, come in.”

Pete gestures for Patrick to go first. Patrick tries to look like he totally expected to be invited into this strange house. Pete winks at him as he passes him.

The house has a sunny, cheerful kitchen that’s the opposite of the dark, smoky kitchen Patrick grew up in. There is indeed freshly baked bread on the counter, and pats of bright yellow butter, and porridge that is thick and rich with cream and sugar and smells like heaven, and fragrant coffee. Patrick stares at all of it and is embarrassed at how loudly his stomach growls.

The woman says to the man sitting at the table, “Jonny, look, this is a lost nobleman, the...” She looks at Patrick questioningly.

Patrick can’t remember his fake name.

Pete says helpfully, “Marquis of Carabas.”

“Their horses ran away from them. With all of their jewels and riches.” The woman gives the man a meaningful look.

The man looks far more interested in them. “Really?” he says. “How horrible! Whereabouts did you lose the horses?”

“Oh,” says Pete vaguely. “Upriver a little way. I’m sure I could remember some details.” Pete gives Patrick a quizzical look. “Do you remember more about where we lost the horses, my lord?”

Patrick says, “I bet I could remember better with some food in my stomach.”

Pete grins at him.

The woman says, “Of course, of course, I’m sorry, where are my manners? Please, please, have a seat, my lord. Can I get you some coffee?”

Patrick has never had coffee. He was never allowed to drink it at home. Patrick says, “Yes, please,” trying not to sound too eager.

“Some porridge and bread and butter for the Marquis as well,” says Pete.

“Of course,” the woman says, as she places the cup of coffee in front of Patrick and bustles to get him some food.

Patrick sniffs at the coffee curiously and takes an experimental sip and just manages to spit it back out. Wow, coffee is _awful_.

“Allow me to prepare it for you, my lord,” says Pete by his side, and starts pouring cream and sugar into it. “I always prepare it for him before handing it to him,” Pete tells the man and woman.

“Oh, of course,” says the woman. “I’m sorry. I should have realized.” She curtseys nervously and sticks porridge in front of Patrick, and bread lathered in butter.

Patrick dives into the porridge. It’s so delicious he can’t help but make a tiny noise of satisfaction. Pete gives him a look, and Patrick tries to bite back any further noises. He does lick the spoon delicately clean, savoring every tiny bit, before he dips it back into the porridge. Pete is still staring at him, and Patrick hesitates, wondering if he’s eating the porridge wrong, and then Pete shakes himself and turns back to the coffee, and Patrick realizes: _Of course_. He’s supposed to make sure Pete eats, too.

“My...servant needs some food as well,” Patrick says, trying to sound commanding.

“Oh, yes, of course, my lord,” says the woman.

Pete smiles at him and nudges the coffee toward him, as he moves to get his own plate of porridge.

Patrick tries the coffee again. It’s much, much better. Pete knows what he’s doing.

Patrick says, as Pete sits at the table, “Now, then. I am fairly sure that we lost the horses near where that little cave was, remember?”

“Yes,” Pete agrees. “Past that bend in the river. Where that tree had fallen in a storm, remember we had to coax the horses past it?”

“Yes, yes,” Patrick says. “Certainly.” Patrick sighs extravagantly in the direction of his porridge. “It’s such a shame. The horses are so weighed down with jewels, they certainly can’t have gone far, but it was bad luck that we couldn’t go after them in the storm last night.”

Pete’s lips twitch at him. He says negligently, “What does it matter, my lord? Someone will find them eventually and return them to us, I’m sure.”

“Oh, yes,” the man says eagerly. “This is a very honest land.”

“Indeed,” Patrick agrees, because _indeed_ sounds like the kind of word the Marquis of Carabas would use. “I thought as much. Did I not say as much, Pete, whilst we were walking together?”

Pete is looking at Patrick with a wide, delighted smile on his face. He says, “Yes, my lord. Yes, you were in fact saying exactly that.”

Patrick turns to the man and says with great gravity, “If we had to lose our horses, I am glad we lost them here, in this land, where they will be safe.”

“Yes,” the man says, sounding a little choked. “Very safe.”

“In the meantime,” Patrick says, “my servant and I will finish this delicious meal and then continue on our way.” Patrick digs back into the porridge. He wants to put his entire _face_ into this porridge.

“You will not stay and search for your horses?” says the woman.

“Indeed not,” says Patrick loftily, slurping up porridge. “We haven’t time. We must get home.”

“We are hosting the king,” Pete says. “The king will not excuse lateness for any reason. You understand.”

The man and woman both nod fervently as if they are well-acquainted with visits from the king.

“Probably,” Patrick hazards wildly, “the king will replace the jewels for us, once we explain.”

“Oh, no doubt, my lord,” Pete agrees solemnly.

“Anyway,” says Patrick, “as soon as we are done eating, we must be off.” Patrick bites into the bread and butter with relish and can’t hold back his moan. If this is bread, then he has no idea what his mother’s been baking all his life.

“I’m just going to...” says the man, and gets up from the table, and makes a couple of hasty, awkward bows before scurrying out of the kitchen to go search for jewel-laden horses in the forest.

Patrick is content to be left in peace to savor his food. The coffee is like dessert, it’s so rich and sweet, Patrick can’t imagine how much Pete put into it to make it like that. And the porridge is so absurdly good that Patrick thinks it might be in fact possible that he’s dead and this is the afterlife. Patrick scrapes his bowl and licks his spoon clean. When he’s done, Pete is watching him fixedly, his eyes dark under the brim of his hat, and Patrick gives him a quizzical look and wonders again what he’s doing wrong.

Patrick lifts an inquiring eyebrow at Pete.

Pete shakes his head in a motion that reminds Patrick strongly of his cat and says, “Well. Now that we have eaten this delicious breakfast, the Marquis and I must be off.”

“Thank you so much for the hospitality, mademoiselle,” Patrick says, and then he does something he’s only ever read about and has always wondered what it would be like to do: He takes her hand in his own and leans over it and kisses the back of it. The woman is wide-eyed when he rises, and he has no idea if he did it right, but whatever, she’ll probably just wave it away as a weird marquis thing.

Patrick walks sedately next to Pete away from the farmhouse until they’re safely in the forest, and then Pete whirls to him and says, “ _Patrick_ ,” and then he...kisses him. He _kisses_ him. It happens so quickly that Patrick can’t even react but Pete definitely presses his hands to Patrick’s cheeks and brushes his lips across Patrick’s. Then he drops his hands and steps away, leaving Patrick wide-eyed and flushed and trying to figure out what just happened. “How are you _real_?” Pete exclaims at him.

“How am _I_ real?” says Patrick disbelievingly, breathing hard because _Pete_ just _kissed_ him, and he’s never been kissed before, not ever, and Pete is acting like... “You’re a half-cat-half-person and you want to know how _I’m_ real?” says Patrick.

Pete smiles at him. “Trust me, you are by far the more interesting of the two of us, Trickster.” Pete tugs playfully on the brim of Patrick’s woebegone hat.

Patrick knows he’s blushing. “It was just a story. I’m good at telling stories. I’ve told myself a lot of them.”

“You know what, Patrick?” Pete says thoughtfully.

“What?” asks Patrick. He doesn’t know why he’s so breathless, and why he can’t look away from Pete.

“I think it’s time to stop telling stories, and time to start living one of them.” Pete grins at him and says, “Let’s go, Marquis.”

***

Pete takes his hat and coat off as they walk, draping the coat over his arm and holding the hat.

Patrick says, “Aren’t you worried someone’s going to see you?”

“I’ll hear them before they get here,” Pete says, unconcerned.

“Right,” Patrick remembers. “Cat senses.”

Pete grins at him. “Cat senses.”

“Can you see in the dark?” Patrick asks.

Pete snorts. “Of course I can see in the dark.”

“ _Sorry_ ,” says Patrick, “if I have questions about my cat that turned into a person.”

“I’m a person who turns into a cat,” Pete says.

Patrick doesn’t see the difference. “Okay.”

Pete sighs and says suddenly, “I’m not used to answering questions about me. I...never answer questions about me.”

“Because you’re just rude?”

“Because I don’t let people know I’ve got cat in me,” Pete replies.

“Oh,” says Patrick, and considers that. “But I know.”

“You’re special,” Pete says simply.

“Why?” Patrick asks, perplexed.

“Patrick, the answer to that is so obvious,” Pete says, and smiles at him.

Patrick frowns, feeling condescended to. “I don’t think it’s obvious.”

“No,” Pete says, still smiling. “You wouldn’t.”

“That’s... What does that mean?”

“You’ve got a great voice,” Pete says.

Patrick wishes he could stop blushing. “No, I don’t, I wish you’d stop saying that.”

“You could sing for us while we walk.”

“No, I couldn’t,” says Patrick.

“Patrickpatrickpatrickpatrickpatrickpatrick--”

Patrick tugs on Pete’s tail to shut him up.

Pete laughs. “You could sing for us _whilst_ we walk,” he says.

Patrick knows he’s blushing again. “Look, I read as many books as I could find. Which wasn’t many.”

“It was fantastic,” Pete beams at him. “You were fantastic. You are the best. I’m keeping you forever.”

“You’re _my_ cat,” Patrick reminds him.

“Exactly. Everyone knows cats choose their humans.” Pete grins.

Pete is stupidly attractive. Patrick’s never thought much about what an attractive human looks like before. He hasn’t had a lot of opportunity. It’s always been abstract. But Pete’s so beautiful Patrick could look at him forever. Patrick even loves his ears that flicker toward whatever Pete’s paying attention to, and the tail that waves around behind him. Who knew his most attractive human would be half-cat? Patrick had no idea. But Pete’s really beautiful, especially when he smiles. Patrick really genuinely didn’t know people could smile so nicely. And Pete...kissed him...for some reason. And thinks he’s special and fantastic. _Him. Patrick_. He’s an idiot kid who’s never left his family’s stupid mill, and Pete is some glamorous cat-boy-thing, what the fuck.

Patrick proves that he’s an idiot kid by saying the stupidest thing in the entire universe then. “Where’d you get your clothes?”

Pete preens and turns in a circle, showing off. “Like them? I feel like I need new boots, though. These are kind of dull.” He holds one out, pointing his toe, and maybe it is a little scuffed but it’s still way nicer than any boots Patrick has ever seen, they go all the way up Pete’s calf, it is an _incredible_ amount of leather.

“No,” Patrick says, “I mean, you weren’t wearing clothes when you were my cat.”

“Cats don’t wear clothes, Patrick,” Pete explains patiently.

Patrick rolls his eyes. “So where did your human clothes come from, asshole?”

Pete laughs like Patrick is a joy to be around. “Magic, Patrick. I’m a cat who changed into a human and you’re caught up on the clothes angle?”

“Well, yeah,” says Patrick. “I mean, can you just create clothes? Because I could use some new clothes.”

“You could,” Pete agrees, “it’s true, but no, I can’t just create clothes. These are my clothes. I wear them when I’m a human. Most of the time.” Pete winks at Patrick.

Patrick blushes so hard he’s surprised the earth doesn’t swallow him up out of secondhand embarrassment for him.

“And I don’t wear them when I’m a cat.” Pete finishes with a shrug.

Patrick thinks about this in silence for a little while. Then he says, “How’d you get to be named Pete?”

“How’d you get to be named Patrick?” Pete counters.

“My parents named me,” Patrick says.

“My parents named me,” says Pete. “I’ve actually got a pretty long name. They had grandiose delusions. Pete is the easiest part of it.”

“Your parents?” Patrick can’t help that he sounds surprised. “There are more of...you?” He tries to say it delicately.

Pete glances over at him, and Patrick’s worried he’s offended him.

“Sorry,” he says anxiously, “sorry, I know I keep asking questions, and that’s probably exactly why you don’t tell anyone you’re a cat-person, I’m sorry.”

“No.” Pete sighs. “I get it. I’m weird.”

“You’re not weird,” Patrick protests.

Pete gives him a look.

“Hey,” Patrick says sharply, and finds that he’s brave enough to grab Pete’s hand and squeeze it. “You’re not weird. You’re awesome. You’re so much cooler than anyone I’ve ever met before. I mean, okay, fine, I’ve met, like, no one. But you’re really great. You’re...the best.”

Pete’s smile is soft and sweet. “Patrick. No offense, but your entire family is composed of complete assholes. It wouldn’t take much for me to be the best.”

“No, I know,” Patrick admits. “But still. You are.”

Pete studies him and then, after a moment, squeezes his hand back. And then he drops it and clears his throat and says, watching the path they’re taking, “I was born fully human. Just like you. The cat thing is...a consequence.”

“Consequence?” Patrick echoes.

“Lead a reckless life,” Pete says cheerfully, “gather a few consequences. It’s fine. It doesn’t bother me.”

Patrick looks at him for a moment, studiously avoiding looking back at Patrick, and decides to drop it. He says instead, “I’m sorry I didn’t save you.”

Pete does look at him then. “That wasn’t your fault, Patrick.”

“Yeah, it was,” Patrick says. “I just stood there and I let you—" Patrick realizes abruptly that he’s going to cry, and that’s the worst, why is he like this. He tries not to think about the vivid image of Tom flinging the sack into the river, the way the cat was yowling. Pete may have gotten out but that was still him in that moment of terror flying through the air.

“Patrick.” It’s Pete’s turn to grab his hand and squeeze it, drawing him to a halt. “Patrick, that wasn’t your fault.”

Patrick squeezes his eyes shut in the hope that Pete won’t realize they’re filled with tears. “Of course it was my fault. I wasn’t strong enough to stop them. I’m never strong enough to do anything. I just…hang the laundry and weed the garden and chop the vegetables and sweep the cobblestones and muck out the stalls and haul the water and feed the chickens and I never say no because I’m—” Patrick sobs and pushes past it. “Because I’m such an idiot and I got you killed.”

“Oh, Patrick,” breathes Pete, gentle and soft, like Patrick deserves any of that. “Sweetest of hearts, most golden of souls.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Patrick gasps furiously, hideously embarrassed.

“I’m not,” Pete says, still in that _tone_. “You didn’t get me killed. I’m not dead. And you’re not an idiot. You’re just a nice person in a world that’s not nice to nice people. That makes you very strong. And you just talked us into coffee and porridge and bread and butter by pretending to be a fake marquis, so, you know, you’re not too shabby, kid.”

Patrick, on a hiccupping sob, throws himself into Pete’s arms, and that is also hideously embarrassing but he doesn’t have it in him to be any more embarrassed than he already is, he has definitely reached peak humiliation. So he just holds onto Pete tightly, pressing his face into Pete’s shoulder, and Pete folds him in, and Patrick doesn’t think about how Pete’s given him more hugs in the past twelve hours than Patrick has received in his entire life. Patrick doesn’t want to get used to this, but he senses it’s going to be harder to live without hugs now that he knows what they’re like. “You talked us into the house,” he says, muffled against Pete’s shoulder.

“Yeah, but you talked us into the breakfast,” Pete says. “Let’s call it teamwork.”

Pete sniffles against Pete. Pete is purring, he realizes. Very lightly but it’s there. Patrick rests for a moment against him. He likes this way too much. “It’s okay if you don’t want to take me with you wherever you’re going. I know I just kind of crashed your journey.”

“Patrick, I crashed _your_ journey,” Pete says. “Anyway, you’re mine. I’m not going to go anywhere without you ever again.”

Patrick absorbs those words. Then he catches the tail swishing next to him and strokes it gently. Pete’s purrs intensify. Patrick says softly, “Were you very frightened when they threw you in the water?”

“No,” Pete answers just as softly. “You were more frightened. Because I knew I could get out, and you had no idea. So no. I wasn’t frightened. I was fine. It was worse for you.”

Patrick can’t tell if Pete’s lying or not but he appreciates it anyway. He sniffles one last time and steps away, rubbing at his face. He’s probably so gross-looking and Pete’s so gorgeous and he’s never going to kiss Patrick ever again if Patrick can’t stop crying all over him. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Pete shakes his head. “Don’t. Let’s go.” He takes Patrick’s hand and he doesn’t let go of it as they walk, and Patrick is grateful for that.

***

It’s hours later, nearing nightfall, when Pete proposes they stop.

Patrick’s hungry again but doesn’t want to say anything, and then Pete pulls out of the folds of his cloak chunks of bread and cheese, which he presents to Patrick with a flourish, saying, “My lord.”

“Where did you get these?” Patrick asks in delight. “Is it magic?”

Pete laughs and sits next to him on the soft grass by the riverbank. “I stole them out of the farmhouse kitchen when no one was looking. I’m really good at stealing things.”

“You stole me my hat,” Patrick says, recalling Pete mentioning that.

“Yes. It was hard to find, let me tell you. That’s why I was gone all day. But I knew exactly what I wanted. I just had to find the person who possessed it.”

“How did you find a person with a hat like this anywhere near the mill?”

“It wasn’t very near,” Pete tells him. He leans against Patrick as they eat.

Patrick, out of habit, reaches out to pet him. Even though he’s not strictly speaking a cat, he’s still so much a cat, all at once, that Patrick can’t help the impulse, and when Pete purrs and butts his head against Patrick’s shoulder, exactly like the cat would have, Patrick thinks it feels oddly normal to be stroking his hand down the sweep of Pete’s back. “I really love my hat,” he says.

“I’m so glad,” Pete says. “I like you in it.”

“What are we going to do for food tomorrow?” Patrick asks, when the last of the bread and cheese is gone.

“Tomorrow will take care of itself,” Pete says loftily.

Patrick yawns enormously.

“We should sleep,” Pete says. “You had a very busy day of walking and pretending to be a marquis.”

“I’m not tired,” Patrick denies, like a child. But he had a such good day, and he doesn’t want it to end.

“I’ll still be here in the morning when you wake up,” Pete promises, tipping Patrick over onto his side and pulling his cloak over him.

“Hang on,” Patrick protests, rubbing at his eyes. “If I sleep with your cloak, how will you keep warm?”

“I’m half-cat,” Pete says. “I’ll be fine.”

“I could start a fire for us,” Patrick says, even though he doesn’t feel like gathering the wood.

“It’s not that cold,” Pete says. “We’ll be fine.” And then he curls up close against Patrick, his head on Patrick’s belly, which is where he would have slept if he was still a cat but it’s a very different position now that he’s a human.

And, at the same time, not that different at all. Patrick scratches behind Pete’s ears and Pete purrs, his tail curving through the air.

 _You’re mine. I’m not going to go anywhere without you ever again_ , was what Pete told him. Patrick wonders if Pete’s made vows like that to other people. Patrick wonders if Pete’s curled up and purred like this for other people. Patrick is wildly jealous of these other people. Pete is the only person Patrick’s ever liked in his entire _life_. It makes him feel hopeless to think of how many other people Pete’s met and liked.

“Where were you before you came to the mill?” Patrick asks, looking at Pete.

Pete’s eyes are closed. He scrunches his nose a little bit as he yawns and then says, “Here and there.”

“Did you have another human?” Patrick asks, and then hates himself for the artlessness of the question.

Pete opens his eyes and looks at Patrick, silent for a long moment. Then he says, “No. I didn’t want one until I met you.”

Pete keeps saying things like that and it doesn’t make any sense. These must be lies. There is nothing so extraordinary about Patrick. But he can feel himself blushing with pleasure, and he feels like he needs to repay this compliment, so he says, “I never had a cat until you, either.”

Pete smiles at him.

***

Pete is warm and snuggly, cuddled tight against Patrick, and Patrick really likes waking up like this, it’s even better than waking up with the cat—and then Pete’s head pops up, his eyes abruptly wide.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath, staring off into the forest. “Someone’s coming.” He is a flurry of motion, trying to get the cloak off of Patrick.

Patrick is still not quite awake, and he moves slowly to help him, and Pete mutters, “What did I do with my hat, there’s no time, sorry,” and then there’s a little breeze along the riverbank, and then Patrick has a cat on his chest. Pete the cat blinks at him with those golden eyes, his whiskers twitching.

Patrick is still trying to stop feeling dizzy from this abrupt awakening when someone _does_ suddenly walk up to where he’s still sprawled out. Patrick looks at the boot toes in front of his eyes, and then up. The sun is behind the man, so Patrick can just make out a silhouette. He squints.

“What are you doing here?” the man demands of Patrick.

“Sleeping,” Patrick says, because that should be obvious.

“You can’t sleep here,” the man snaps at him. “This is the King’s land. Didn’t you know that?”

“No,” Patrick says, sitting up and putting his hat on, “or I wouldn’t have slept here.”

Pete, with a little _mrowr_ , nudges at his own hat, on the other side of Patrick’s, as if Patrick might leave without it. Patrick picks it up and tucks it under his arm as he stands.

“Why do you have two hats?” the man demands suspiciously.

“Why not?” asks Patrick, because he doesn’t know how else to answer the question.

“Where’d you get a hat like that anyway?” asks the man. “Did you steal that from somewhere?”

Patrick opens his mouth, hoping that maybe something astonishing is about to present itself to him to say.

Pete takes off, darting into the forest.

And Patrick exclaims, “Oh, no, my cat!” and goes chasing after him.

Pete can run much faster than Patrick can, and he’s small enough to be able to wend his way under thickets instead of crashing through them inelegantly the way Patrick does. Patrick is out of breath and clinging wildly to Pete’s coat and hat and then he trips over Pete.

Human Pete.

“Careful,” Pete says, as Patrick sprawls on top of him, breathless.

Pete smiles at him and taps the brim of Patrick’s lopsided hat.

Patrick would kind of like to kiss him. Their faces are close together, and Pete is very beautiful, Pete’s mouth is the most beautiful of all, the way it tips up at Patrick, except maybe Pete’s eyes are the most beautiful, warm and golden, fringed by dark eyelashes. Every part of Pete is the most beautiful, and Patrick has no idea how to go about kissing the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Pete made it seem so easy when he did it, just leaning in and pressing his lips, but Patrick is paralyzed by the thought of fucking it up, and, even worse, of Pete not wanting it. Pete hasn’t kissed him since the first time. Probably he was gross to kiss and Pete’s over it now.

Pete says, “Did you notice his boots?”

Pete is apparently not thinking at all about kissing Patrick.

“What?” says Patrick, disoriented.

“His boots, my lord,” Pete says playfully, wriggling out from underneath Patrick. “They were truly excellent boots. I can’t believe you didn’t notice.” Pete stands and positions his hat over his cat ears, reaching for the coat Patrick’s still holding.

Patrick doesn’t know which one of them is the weird one: Pete for noticing the boots, or Patrick for not noticing. “I was worried we were about to be arrested.”

“Like I would ever let you be arrested, Trick-a-doodle-doo,” Pete scoffs.

“What?” says Patrick at the nickname.

“I mean, I would, but then I would rescue you. Come on.”

Patrick scrambles to his feet to catch up to Pete, who’s already taken off. “Where are we going?”

“This is the King’s land,” Pete responds. “Didn’t you hear him?”

“Oh, yeah. So we’re leaving?”

“Leaving?” Pete echoes in disbelief. He stops walking and stares at Patrick. “ _Patrick_. Where, I beg of you, is your sense of _adventure_? There is no way we are _leaving_.”

“But,” says Patrick, confused, “I mean. That guy seemed to want us to leave.”

“That guy.” Pete waves his hand dismissively. “The only thing important about that guy is his boots, which I’m going to steal.”

“What?” gasps Patrick. “How?”

“When he’s sleeping, of course. But that’s not the point. The point is, this incredibly charming man used to sit on a bluff with me and tell me these beautiful stories about the lives he was going to lead. Pirates and wizards and noblemen. Do you remember that man?”

“Yes,” Patrick admits, blushing. “But—”

“Good. Send him my way, good sir.” Patrick bats at the tip of Patrick’s nose, the way he would have as a cat.

Patrick wrinkles his nose in reaction and says, “Pete, those were _stories_.”

“Do you know what a story is?” Pete says. He’s started walking again and Patrick has to jog to catch up.

“Yes,” Patrick says. “I know what a story is.”

“A story is merely a truth-that-could-be,” Pete continues.

“No,” Patrick says. “That is not what a story is.”

“Who’s to say that you are not a pirate?”

“ _I’m_ to say that,” Patrick says. “I’m not a pirate.”

“You could be, though. What I’m saying is: No one here knows you’re not.”

“Yes, they do, Pete. They’ll know it as soon as they look at me. I don’t look like a pirate. I look like a stupid farm boy whose only friend is his cat.”

“That’s one version of your story,” replies Pete simply. “It’s the wrong one.”

“It’s the truth,” Patrick says.

“It’s _a_ truth. But that’s not who you are. Patrick, listen to me very carefully: From now on, you are the Marquis of Carabas. And you’re going to meet the King.”

***

Pete, Patrick thinks, is out of his mind. He’s a half-cat person, so Patrick supposes that makes sense. It’s not even worth arguing with a half-cat person, Patrick decides. He follows behind Pete, who seems to know where he’s going, or is doing a good job of pretending, and thinks of what he’s going to say when they get arrested. _We meant no harm, my cat just wanted a new pair of boots_. Patrick feels a little hysterical.

“What do you sing?” Pete asks suddenly, after a long period of silence during which Patrick is panicking progressively more over meeting the King.

“Huh?” Patrick says.

“Those songs you used to sing to me, what were they? I didn’t know them.”

“Oh.” Patrick blushes furiously. “I don’t know any songs.”

Pete gives him a look. “You sang songs to me.”

“Right, but…I made them up,” Patrick blurts out. “I don’t know any real songs. I just made them up.”

Pete stops walking. He studies Patrick curiously. “Patrick, you _wrote_ those?”

“I mean, I guess, I just…” Patrick shrugs, embarrassed. “It’s just the music in my head. You know? What’s the music in your head sound like?”

“I don’t have music in my head,” Pete says. “Not like that. Most people don’t.”

Patrick blinks, startled. “Really?”

Pete smiles at him. “You are very magnificent, how do you not know?” He kisses Patrick’s cheek gently and keeps walking.

Patrick stands, stunned, and presses his hand furtively to his cheek before Pete can turn around and catch him at it. Then he hurries to catch up. “Hang on, are you sure about that? I mean, my family said I was weird but I thought maybe _they_ were the weird ones.”

“Oh, your family was terrible,” Pete says lightly, “but I’ve met loads of people, and none of them sang songs like you. Maybe you’re part nightingale, what do you think?” Pete gives him a sly sideways look.

“If I’m part nightingale and you’re part cat, doesn’t that make us mortal enemies?” Patrick asks.

“Patrick, my dear, what makes you think you’re not in danger from me? Because I would eat you alive given half the opportunity.”

He’s…not talking about _literally_ eating him, Patrick thinks. That tone of voice is not for cannibalism. Or, if it is, Patrick’s okay with being eaten alive. He’s going to sign right up for it. “Okay,” he agrees, without thinking. Pete doesn’t need half an opportunity, Patrick’s going to hand him a whole one.

Pete grins at him and rubs his thumb briefly over Patrick’s lower lip, like that’s a thing that can be done casually and then moved on from. Patrick spends a little while choking on air and trying to recover.

It’s a warm day. The sun is bright. Pete must be dying in his coat but he doesn’t take it off, and Patrick assumes that’s because the encounter with the guard that morning spooked him.

Patrick says, “How come your hat and coat didn’t disappear when you turned into a cat?”

“They only disappear with me if I’m wearing them when I turn,” Pete says. “Thanks for bringing them along when you ran.”

“Of course,” says Patrick. “You must lose clothes left and right.”

“I’m more careful about it when I don’t have a partner,” says Pete, and grins.

Patrick blushes again. Really, all this blushing is making him light-headed. He says to distract himself, “What was your family like?”

There’s a moment of silence, and then Pete says softly, “Lovely. They were lovely.”

There’s something about the way he says it that makes Patrick’s heart ache. He’s sorry he asked it so unthinkingly. He takes Pete’s hand and squeezes it. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be,” Pete says, as brusquely as possible. “I’m sure they’re fine. Nothing happened to them. I was an asshole and I ran away.”

“And you never went back?”

“I’m a cat, Patrick. Who wants their long-lost son to show up with a tail?”

“It’s a nice tail,” Patrick says loyally.

Pete smiles a little. “It’s okay. They’re better off without me.”

“Pete,” Patrick protests. “I’m sure that’s not true—”

Pete suddenly claps a hand over Patrick’s mouth, and Patrick swallows the rest of what he was going to say, listening. He can’t hear anything but he can tell that Pete can, because he’s looking alertly off to their left. “This way,” he hisses, and takes Patrick’s hand and tugs him in the opposite direction. The ground starts sloping sharply, and Patrick almost stumbles, but Pete is sure-footed and catches him and then tucks him into a mossy alcove of rock, over which water is trickling, collecting into a tiny waterfall into a cool, clear pool directly in front of them. Pete looks at Patrick and puts a finger to his lips, and then turns into a cat. Patrick tries to remember exactly how it happens but it’s just that one minute there is a Pete, and the next minute there’s a dark gray tomcat who leaps out of the alcove.

Patrick sits on the damp ground and looks at the pool in front of him. It looks very refreshing. He’s very thirsty. He listens very hard and can’t hear anything, so he creeps forward and sticks his hand out to catch some of the trickling water. It would have been easier to go down to the pool but he was told to stay put, so he’s stuck sitting there literally licking water off of his hand. Pete comes back as a cat who looks at him for a second, his tongue pressed against his palm, and Patrick freezes like that. Then Pete turns back into a person, his gaze locked on Patrick’s lips against his hand.

Patrick, feeling self-conscious, decides to pretend this is totally normal, and licks up the length of his index finger. “I wanted water,” he defends himself. “And you told me to stay here.”

“Don’t stop on my account,” Pete says, sounding strangled.

Patrick hesitates, unsure what that means. Water is still dripping off his fingers. He feels like an idiot.

Pete suddenly knocks his hat off his head, revealing his ears, pricked forward in Patrick’s direction. And then he ducks forward and licks the water off of Patrick’s little finger.

Patrick says, “ _Oh_ ,” and loses his balance, caught completely off-guard by the way his blood skids to route away from his heart.

Pete looks at Patrick from under his eyelashes, catching a hand loosely around Patrick’s wrist, and curls his tongue around Patrick’s ring finger. He could have been lapping at water, but this is definitely not about water. There’s a ringing in Patrick’s ears, like bells: _Pay attention, an important thing is happening_.

Pete pulls off of Patrick’s finger, leaving it messy with his saliva, it should be disgusting, it’s the hottest thing that Patrick never bothered to imagine.

“Patrick,” Pete says, his voice pitched low and rough, a tone Patrick’s never heard before and wants to keep just for him. Pete’s tail is thrashing so wildly that it pokes its way out of the cloak. Pete shifts to close Patrick in against the wall at his back. He’s not touching him but he’s _right there_ , so close that the brim of Patrick’s hat is covering both of them, and Pete’s gaping-open coat blocks any of the world of that exists beyond him. “Patrick, breathe,” Patrick murmurs.

Patrick manages to say, “I don’t want to.” He doesn’t want to do anything that might stop this moment.

Pete smiles, and then closes the distances to kiss him, but it’s not like the previous kiss, that brief press of lips, Patrick’s mouth was already parted for breath and Pete’s tongue darts inside and Patrick loses any semblance of rational thought other than _how much fucking more he needs of that_. He closes his hands into Pete’s shirt and pulls him closer, flush up against him, trying to find a way to kiss him back that’s…that’s _good_ , that will make Pete want to keep doing that, but Pete is purring wildly, vibrating under Patrick’s hands, and shoving up against him, sending feverish sparks leaping through Patrick, and Patrick thinks maybe he's doing okay here, holding his own.

“Patrick—” Pete gasps, as Patrick slides his hands over Pete’s back, tugs him in closer, thrusts upward with his hips in search of instinctive friction, of wanting to be _touched_ so much more than Pete is touching. “Listen to me—we’re surrounded by—palace guards—I can’t—I can’t ravish you in—oh, fuck…” Pete trails off into a kiss and another kiss and then another kiss.

“I just want—” Patrick mumbles, and he knows he’s desperate and pleading and not any of the worldly people Pete’s kissed before but he can’t help it. “I just _want_ — _Pete_.”

“Fuck,” Pete says thickly, and presses his face into Patrick’s neck, which keeps Patrick from kissing him. He presses his hands to Patrick’s hips, which keeps Patrick from thrusting up into him. Patrick makes a frustrated sound, as Pete’s purrs catch and rumble against him.

“Pete,” Patrick whines, and thrashes a little in Pete’s hold, making Pete twitch against him.

“Fuck,” Pete says again. “Fine. Just…” Pete dips a hand into Patrick’s pants.

And Patrick sees fucking _stars_. He pulls hard at Pete’s hair, he feels like he’s trying to climb directly into Pete, he just wants him so much so much so much _so much_ —

Patrick comes the way a fire rips its way through dry wood, a conflagration.

Pete, purring, kisses his neck and murmurs, “You gorgeous—gorgeous—beautiful—you come on fucking _key_ ,” and then lifts his head up to catch Patrick’s lips in a kiss.

Patrick feels completely unable to kiss so he basically just opens his mouth and lets Pete take anything he wants, Pete can have anything, anything, _everything_. Patrick is giddy. He realizes he’s laughing only when Pete pulls back, smiling at him.

“Listen to that,” he says, in a voice shot through with awe, and cards his fingers through Patrick’s shaggy uncut hair. Patrick must have lost his hat at some point. Pete’s fingers feel divine. “You should do that more often.”

“Come?” says Patrick.

“ _Laugh_ ,” says Pete. “If one begets the other, so be it.” Pete moves his coat out of the way to give his tail room to swish back and forth and settles against Patrick, still purring.

Patrick is never going to move again so he hopes Pete is okay with living in this little mossy alcove the rest of their lives.

Patrick suddenly opens his eyes. “Hang on. You didn’t…” Patrick, embarrassed, gestures awkwardly.

“It’s not my first time being touched by someone else,” Pete says with a shrug. “I can wait until we’re somewhere I can take my time and get us properly naked.”

Patrick blushes. He wants to deny that, but it’s probably pretty obvious to someone as experienced as Pete. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Sorry?” Pete sounds amazed. “What could you possibly be sorry for?”

“I know I’m probably not, like, good—”

“Patrick, stop it. Stop it.” Pete butts his head into the curve of Patrick’s shoulder, rubbing. “Never say anything like that to me ever again. You’re perfect. You’re _perfect_.”

Patrick is not perfect. But Pete is so very nice. Patrick scratches behind his ears and sings to him. Pete deserves whatever he wants, and if he wants that, then it’s fine. So Patrick sings.

Pete smiles and purrs and says, “You’re going to knock the King off his feet.”

“You’re a delusional cat-person,” Patrick tells him, sleepy and sated.

“Patrick,” Pete says. “I’ve got to do a little hunting. I’m going to leave you all tucked up here under my coat, and you can sleep, and I’ll be back when I’m done, okay?”

“I don’t have to sleep,” Patrick denies.

“Uh-huh,” says Pete. “I’ll be right back, my dearest, sweetest mouse.”

“I’m not a _mouse_ ,” Patrick protests. He lets Pete tuck him up under the coat, even thought it’s a warm day and Patrick isn’t cold, but it’s nice to be taken care of like this. “You’ve been taking really good care of me,” Patrick says, “and I let my brothers drown you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Pete says. “You almost drowned yourself trying to save me. I’ll be back.”

Patrick nods and snuggles under the cloak and lets Pete put his hat over his head to hide the sunlight.

***

Patrick doesn’t nap for very long. He wakes overheated and thrumming with nervous energy. He feels like everything with Pete could have been a dream. He’s not sure it wasn’t a dream. A particularly vivid dream. Maybe everything has been a dream, and there is no cat-person at all, and Patrick drowned in the river and this is what the afterlife is like. Or something. It’s a weird afterlife. He’d almost like to tell his mom, just to prove her wrong. _The afterlife isn’t God sitting in judgment with the angel Gabriel and a fiery sword, it’s a sexy cat-person willing to put his hand on my cock._ His mother would faint dead away.

Patrick waits for Pete for a little while, but then he starts to get impatient. And then he starts to doubt everything. He starts to doubt that Pete is ever coming back. Probably Pete ran away from him because of how stupid and embarrassing it is to beg to be ravished in a mossy alcove on the King’s land. Then he starts to doubt that there ever was a Pete. His first dream thought might be the correct one. Granted, he has a long, dark blue coat next to him that can’t be explained without Pete, but coming up with a reasonable alternative explanation for the coat seems a lot simpler than explaining that his cat has turned into a man.

Patrick goes down to the pool and splashes some water on his face and then lays in the sun for a little while, looking up at the sky and trying to decide what he ought to do next. How long should he wait for Pete before deciding he isn’t coming back (or Patrick imagined him to begin with)? Patrick has decided that he will sit in this spot for an entire day before admitting that he’s on his own when Pete shows up. The sun is setting behind him, and Pete is silhouetted as he walks up to him, a jaunty bounce in his step. He’s whistling a tune that Patrick recognizes as one of the songs he used to sing to him.

Patrick sits up, and as Pete comes closer and into focus Patrick can tell that he’s wearing a new coat, a dark gray one close to the color of his cat fur, and new boots with fancy overturned cuffs: so much leather that it’s using the leather _uselessly_.

“You’re not in your hiding place,” Pete calls to Patrick as he approaches.

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” Patrick replies with thinking.

“So you thought you’d let yourself get captured by the King’s guard? What foolishness.” Pete drops to the ground next to Patrick. “Of course I was coming back.” Pete smiles at him sunnily.

“Did you steal those boots?” Patrick asks, with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Pete laughs and kisses Patrick, familiarly and with finesse, and Patrick tries to deserve a kiss like that, tries to kiss back the same way.

Pete has barely begun kissing, though, when Pete pulls back. His gold eyes are bright and bewitching. If Pete’s been enchanted by a witch to be a cat, Patrick definitely isn’t immune to the enchantment. “I want to show you something,” Pete announces, and gets easily to his feet.

“Show me what?” Patrick asks blankly, kiss-dazed. Pete is really good at moving on from kisses, Patrick needs a little while to recover.

“Come see,” Pete says, eager.

Patrick gets to his feet with much less elegance than Pete did, and picks up Pete’s old coat to drape over his arm. He says to Pete, “Did you steal that new coat, too?”

Pete grins. “Come on,” he says, and sets off confidently.

Patrick follows behind him. Pete is walking quickly, and loudly. “I thought you were worried about palace guards.”

“It’s alright,” Pete says negligently. “They won’t bother us.”

“Why not?” asks Patrick, perplexed.

“Because, the Marquis of Carabas is expected any minute now, to pay his respects to the King.”

“What?” says Patrick, startled. “What Marquis of Carabas?”

“You’re the only one,” Pete rejoins lightly.

“Pete,” Patrick says, in an advanced state of alarm. “I can’t go meet the King like this. I’m…” Patrick tries to think of a less embarrassing way to say _I’ve got dried come on my stomach, I’m not in any state to meet a King_.

“You’re right,” Pete agrees. “You are. I’m glad we agree that you are not _yet_ in a state to meet the King. But I’m working on that. There.” They’ve reached the edge of the forest. In front of them are grassy meadows stretching out to a building unlike any Patrick’s ever seen before. It seems like it’s made of stone instead of wood, and it’s enormous, and it’s flying bright yellow banners from every available rooftop, all of them snapping in the breeze.

“Is that a castle?” Patrick breathes, awe-struck, because reading about castles turned out to be poor preparation for seeing one up close like this.

“It is,” Pete says. “Can you not see it clearly?”

“What?” Patrick looks at Pete, confused.

“You’re squinting when you look at it,” Pete says, eyes flickering over Patrick’s face closely.

“That’s because I don’t have fancy special cat vision,” Patrick says, and looks back at the castle. “So the King lives in there, huh?”

“He does indeed. With his daughter the Princess. And they are both very eager to meet the Marquis of Carabas.”

“Pete.” Patrick sighs. “That can’t possibly be true. How do they have any idea about the Marquis of Carabas?”

“You sent the King a bunch of gifts.”

“I did what?”

“With me acting as your delivery-person, of course.” Pete bows a little, looking pleased with himself.

Patrick stares at him. “What gifts?”

“Well, first, a very beautiful rabbit that I caught after quite a bit of trouble.”

Patrick’s stomach growls on cue. “You caught a rabbit and you gave it _away_?”

“I’m playing a long game, little canary,” Pete says, and bats at Patrick’s nose. “Keep up.”

“I can’t keep up,” Patrick says, “you’re talking nonsense.”

“You gifted the King a rabbit and a very beautiful deck of cards.”

“A deck of _cards_?” echoes Patrick.

Pete shrugs. “It was the only thing any of the palace guards had worth stealing. Other than these beautiful boots and gorgeous coat, of course.”

“What kind of nobleman gives a King _cards_?”

“An intriguing one,” answers Pete. “The King is most intrigued. That’s exactly what he said. He is ‘most intrigued.’ Oh, you gave flowers to the Princess, too. A beautiful bouquet of cuttings from your extensive flower garden.”

“I don’t have a flower garden,” Patrick reminds Pete.

“Shh, my sweet,” Pete says, resting a finger against Patrick’s mouth. “Speak not with such harsh words from such beautiful lips.”

“I have allied with a cat of questionable judgment,” Patrick says against Pete’s finger.

Pete laughs and drops his finger away. “So now. We must solve the quandary of your clothes.” He looks Patrick up and down thoughtfully. “Obviously a marquis of your social stature and tremendous good taste would never dress like _that_.”

“Maybe you should have stolen me some clothes while you were replacing all of the perfectly good clothes you already possessed,” Patrick points out.

“I have the clothes of a servant. You, my lord, are a marquis. You need something much better.”

“Where are you going to steal clothes suitable for a marquis?” asks Patrick drily. “From the King?”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Pete muses.

“Pete, I forbid you to steal clothes from the King. I won’t have us hanged over this Marquis nonsense.”

“I’d never get us hanged,” Pete says. “Have a little faith. Anyway, you can’t forbid a cat from doing anything, don’t you know anything about cats?”

“What’s going to happen when the King realizes you stole the playing cards from one of his guards?”

“Why would the King ever realize that?” asks Pete, surprised.

“The guard will tell him!” Patrick points out.

Pete scoffs. “The guard is never going to tell the King his playing cards got stolen. Imagine bothering the King with something so trivial. The guards will squabble amongst themselves as to who took the playing cards. And even if the guard does happen to see the King in possession of the cards, the guard is never going to accuse the King of stealing the cards. Patrick, dear, I’ve done this many times, don’t fret.” Pete pats his cheek.

“You’ve stolen playing cards on behalf of a fictional Marquis many times?” Patrick asks, and he can’t tell if he’s jealous or impressed or appalled.

“Oh, no, this is a first. But I’ve stolen _things_ , in general, many times. Now. Let’s head back to the river and find a place to hide for the night. If the palace guards find us, we can always say you’re the Marquis of Carabas come to visit, but I’d rather control the circumstances of your first kingly encounter, if possible.”

Patrick doesn’t think he’s ever going to be ready to meet the King, although he doesn’t want to admit that to Pete, who seems to think Patrick is capable of amazing things. Patrick just says, “Great, but, in the meantime, what are we going to eat?”

“Such mundane things occupy your mind,” says Pete, shaking his head mournfully. But then he says, “Like I didn’t steal us food _whilst_ I was out. You do so wound my feelings.”

“Are you ever going to forget that I said ‘whilst’?” Patrick asks with a sigh.

Pete shoots a grin over his shoulder as he leads them back to the river. “Never.”

***

Dinner isn’t especially interesting, some more bread and cheese Pete stole from somewhere, and Patrick mostly spends the meal watching Pete and wondering if Pete would kiss him again and touch him again if Patrick asked, preferably in more places and with less clothing. Pete’s tucked them up under a small bridge arching across the river, and Patrick lit them a small fire, and it feels dim and cozy and like it’s just the two of them in the entire world, the two of them and this river running by them, and Patrick is frozen, unsure what move to make with Pete and wishing Pete would make the move for him.

Then Pete smiles at him, devilish and sure of himself, and Patrick braces himself, dry-mouthed, for whatever sinful delight is coming next, Patrick can’t wait for it.

Pete says, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“Okay,” Patrick manages.

“Close your eyes and open your mouth,” Pete says.

Patrick does as requested, his heart thundering in his ribcage.

Patrick wasn’t sure what to expect, but what he gets wasn’t close to his realm of possibilities. Pete sticks something into his mouth that begins to melt slowly, sweet and creamy and rich. Patrick closes his mouth, the better to focus on it. He doesn’t know how to place the taste, he just knows he wants more of it.

Patrick opens his eyes to find Pete smirking at him. “What was that?”

“Chocolate,” Pete says. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t have had it before. Want some more?” Pete holds up a square of something that’s a darker brown than Pete’s eyes but not as dark as his hair.

Patrick nods, and Pete smiles and breaks the chocolate in half, handing Patrick his share. And then he snuggles against Patrick’s shoulder, nibbling on his chocolate. His hat and coat are off, leaving his ears and tail free. Patrick’s noticed that Pete only covers himself up when he absolutely can’t help it. It must be unpleasant. Patrick would ask about it but he’s not sure that’s the right direction to take the evening in, especially with Pete purring now against him.

Pete murmurs through his purrs, “Will you sing something for me?”

So Patrick does, blushing the whole time.

When he’s done Pete rubs his head against the side of Patrick’s throat, ears twitching, and says, “Thank you. That was so lovely.”

“Pete,” Patrick says thickly, wishing he were more impressive than this, but it’s hard to think with Pete plastered up against him like this. “Do you think maybe you might want to kiss me again?”

“Oh, Patrick,” Pete says, and shifts to butt his head against the underside of Patrick’s chin. “I want to kiss you more than anything else in the world. But I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Patrick swallows thickly. He wants to close his hands around Pete’s hips and pull him fully onto his lap, but he doesn’t know how to do that smoothly and also Pete’s words make him even more uncertain. “Why not?”

“Because you’re you and I’m me,” says Pete. He’s got his face pressed into Patrick’s neck, panting harshly against Patrick’s skin.

Patrick’s heart sinks as far as his feet and possibly farther. “I get it,” he says, trying to affect nonchalance about this. How would the Marquis of Carabas act in the face of such rejection? “I mean, yeah, you can do way better than—”

“Patrick.” Pete lifts his head and blinks down at him. It’s dark all around them, save for the firelight behind Pete, and Patrick wonders how well Pete can see him with his cat eyes. “No. Because _you_ can do better than _me_. I’m a fucking _cat-person_ , and you’re amazing.”

That makes zero sense. “What?” Patrick says.

Pete shakes his head, frustrated. “What don’t you understand about—If I kiss you, I’m never going to want to stop.”

“Okay,” Patrick says breathlessly, because that sounds _fine_ to him.

Pete presses their foreheads together and mutters, “Damn it,” and then kisses him _hard_. Patrick, trying to keep up, doesn’t stand a chance, and he is _fine_ with that. Time jumps and stutters in odd ways, he’s under Pete entirely, his shirt is half-unbuttoned, Pete’s hands map out his chest while his mouth bites under Patrick’s jaw, and Patrick can only record impressions, his brain can only register _good better better more yes best_.

“Shall I tell you a story, Patrick?” says Pete into Patrick’s sternum, Patrick can feel Pete’s lips forming the words against his skin. “A truth-that-could-be.”

“You can tell me whatever you want,” Patrick says honestly, his hands tugging at the hair behind Pete’s cat ears.

Pete looks up at him through his eyelashes and dips his tongue lowerlowerlower. He says, “In a truth-that-could-be,” as he deals with Patrick’s pants, “you are Patrick and I am Pete.” Pete bites at the inside of Patrick’s thigh and Patrick closes his eyes with a gasp. “We met at a market day,” Pete breathes against Patrick’s hip, before licking there. “You were selling flour.” Pete’s tongue swipes up Patrick’s ribs. “You were humming under your breath.” Pete drags his tongue over a nipple. “The sun shone on the copper in your hair.” Pete rests his ear briefly over Patrick’s heart, as if listening, before resuming, “You were the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.” Pete noses at Patrick’s shoulder. “I was terrified to approach you.” Pete nips at Patrick’s collarbone. “My silver tongue tarnished in panic at your perfection.” Pete kisses up Patrick’s neck. “I went up to you and I said…” Pete lifts his head.

Patrick blinks his eyes open slowly, feeling tilted and dizzy and _dreamy_ , riding an edge of buzzing anticipation and soothed sweetness that he can barely comprehend but never wants to lose.

Pete is looking down at him, an expression on his face Patrick can’t untangle, and he reaches forward to let his fingers brush softly over Patrick’s face, his eyebrows, the slope of his nose, the rise of his cheekbones. “I said, ‘I’m looking for treasure, can I look around your chest?’”

Patrick says without meaning to, because apparently he can’t _help_ being an asshole, “Wow.”

Pete tips a lopsided smile at him as he brushes his fingers over Patrick’s lips. “Yes. You said, ‘Do you want to buy some flour or not, asshole?’ So sullen and pouty and un-charmed.”

“This is a bad story,” Patrick says with a little scowl. “Tell me another one.”

“No, no, this is the best story,” Pete says. “This is the one where I’m Pete and you’re Patrick and this is how we meet and all I can think is how much I want to tease you for the rest of our lives. It’s such a good story,” Pete says, and he sounds sad.

Patrick doesn’t want Pete to sound sad, especially not when Patrick is sprawled naked underneath him. So Patrick says, “Okay, my turn to tell a story.” He takes Pete’s shirt off, thinking. “We met at a market day.” Pete’s skin is covered in ink, and Patrick blinks, thrown off-course by all of the _color_. “ _Pete_ ,” he breathes reverently, and walks his fingers over the drawings. “You’re _art_.”

“I’m covered in art,” Pete says. “There’s a difference.”

Patrick looks up at Pete’s face, noting how uncertain he looks, and frowns, and then shoves Pete over. Probably that could have been done more expertly, but when he stretches out over Pete, Pete looks up at him with those feline eyes of his, wide and unblinking, and Patrick wants to live in them. “We met at a market day,” Patrick repeats firmly. “I was selling flour.” Patrick leans down to trace his tongue over the first piece of art he can reach, thorns ringing Pete’s neck. “You were walking up and down the stalls.” Patrick noses further down, hoping it’s not obvious that he feels like he’s on the verge of fainting over having his face in Pete’s chest, drowning in his skin. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you.” Patrick hesitates, then ventures to lick a nipple the way Pete did to him, and Pete’s purrs hitch for a second and his hands tighten in Patrick’s hair, so that was a good experiment, Patrick decides. “Nobody could.” Patrick kisses over Pete’s heart, hoping the sentimentality isn’t too cringe-inducing. “You were all smiles and winks and magic tricks.” Patrick drags the flat of his tongue toward Pete’s belly button. “You were possibilities I never imagined.” Patrick hesitates, reaching the barrier of Pete’s pants, and then takes a deep breath and finds his daring and takes them off him, together with those absurd boots. It helps that Pete is so still, watching him avidly, his cat ears pricked toward him, tail curving toward Patrick as if tracking his movements.

Pete’s cock is a beautiful and intimidating thing, and Patrick skirts around it to give himself time to build up daring, moving over to Pete’s hips instead. He murmurs, “You said to me, ‘I’m looking for treasure, can I look around your chest?’ And I said, ‘Do you want to buy some flour or not, asshole?’” Patrick takes a shaky breath. “So sullen and pouty and _unbelievably charmed_.” And then Patrick gathers enough courage to at least _try_ to go down on Pete, and he has no idea what he’s doing and it probably shows but Pete purrs wildly and says Patrick’s name in a strangled tone of voice that Patrick loves an impossible amount.

“You don’t…” gasps Pete, tugging at Patrick’s hair. “You don’t have to.”

Patrick ignores him because he _wants_ to, because Pete’s heavy breaths gathering into a fever pitch because of _Patrick_ is like wishing on a star and having it come true. Pete suddenly pulls _hard_ on Patrick’s hair, succeeding in pulling him off just as he comes, and Patrick is both a little annoyed and a little relieved, because now he can pretend he wouldn’t have handled that ridiculously.

Pete shoves at Patrick, and Patrick obligingly rolls off of him, and then Pete pounces on him, devouring his mouth in a frantic kiss. Pete’s purrs are such wracking all-body affairs that he can barely hold the kiss, he’s vibrating on top of Patrick, and he’s still purring around Patrick’s cock once he gets it in his mouth and Patrick can’t-can’t-can’t, it’s too much, he makes the mistake of looking down and meeting Pete’s eyes, watching him deep and dark as he _purrs_ around him, and he comes with zero warning, it’s like the sky falling down on him, he’s so shattered in the aftermath that he can do nothing but sprawl there, panting. He probably looks ridiculous, naked and spent, but he can’t bring himself to care.

If he had realized it was going to be like _that_ , he would have climbed on top of Pete as soon as he’d shown up in the cave.

Pete curls up next to him, head on his shoulder, and purrs. Patrick, yawning, manages to get enough energy to reach out and stroke over Pete’s tail, and Pete purrs harder and butts his head against Patrick’s shoulder. He mumbles into Patrick’s skin, “I wish we’d met like that.”

“What does it matter,” Patrick asks sleepily, and kisses Pete’s scarred right cat-ear. “As long as we met.”

“I need to tell you another story,” Pete says.

“Okay.” Patrick shifts to cuddle Pete more closely against him. “Is it about how your ear got this chunk taken out of it?”

“No,” Pete says. “That’s not an interesting story.”

“Everything about you is interesting,” Patrick says, and then, “Why did I say that out loud? Pretend I’m less of an embarrassing disaster.”

“You’re sex-drunk,” Pete says. Patrick can hear the smile in his voice as Pete nips at Patrick’s throat and says, “I need you to listen to me, though. This is a story about the Marquis of Carabas.”

“I hate the Marquis of Carabas,” Patrick says.

“You don’t even know him yet,” Pete says. “I’m telling you about him now. Stop.” Pete suddenly take Patrick’s hand off his tail.

“Oh.” Patrick feels like even more of an idiot. “Do you not like that?”

“I like it too much. If you keep doing that, I’m going to get distracted before I tell you about the Marquis of Carabas.”

“Let’s get distracted,” Patrick suggests.

“The Marquis of Carabas is charming, and witty, and sweet,” Pete says.

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Okay.”

“He is,” Pete insists. “He has many lands, and a vast fortune, but he is humble and modest. He has the voice of an angel and he likes beautiful things, soft stories, daydreams and tales of faeries.”

Patrick frowns. “You make me sound foolish.”

“I make you sound _lovely_ ,” Pete corrects. “Which you are. The Princess is smitten with your golden soul. You have a manservant who is utterly devoted to you because you saved my life.”

“I didn’t save your life,” Patrick denies.

Pete goes on like Patrick hasn’t spoken. “You saved my life when I was about to be robbed by highwaymen. You were riding incognito, on your trusty steed, and you burst upon the scene of the crime and made all of the thieves quaver in their boots.”

“ _I_ made them quaver?” Patrick says doubtfully.

“You are extremely formidable when you feel like it,” Pete assures him.

“Is this where I should tell you that I have no idea how to ride a horse?” asks Patrick.

Pete sighs. “We’ll get around that somehow.”

“Look,” says Patrick reasonably. “Let’s forget about the King and this whole Marquis of Carabas thing. Let’s just run away together somewhere.”

“Okay,” says Pete. “What are your marketable skills?”

“What?”

“How will we support ourselves, my liege? Or shall I just steal us all of our food forever, and we’ll sleep under bridges by rivers wherever we go?”

Patrick opens and closes his mouth and looks at the underside of the bridge over their heads. He…feels stupid again. “I could do something. I’m not an idiot. I could learn something.”

“No. You’re not an idiot. You’re immensely clever. I’m an idiot, though, and this is the only thing I know how to do, so let me do it, hmm? Otherwise I’m just a lot of trouble.”

“You’re no trouble. What are you talking about?”

“Patrick.” Pete suddenly pulls himself up to stretch out over him. “Why don’t you let me distract you? We can see if you can last more than two minutes this time.”

“Oh, shut up,” Patrick says sulkily, “you didn’t last much longer yourself.”

“Is that a challenge?” Pete asks. “I accept your challenge, my good and handsome sir.”

“You’re going to cheat with the purring, aren’t you?” Patrick says.

“Oh, I am going to cheat _wildly_ ,” Pete says, and does.

***

Patrick wakes to Pete shaking him frantically. “What, what, _what_?” he complains, reaching for the cloak they fell asleep under because he’s cold.

He’s cold because he’s naked and there is no cloak on him anymore at all. Huh.  

“Patrick,” Pete says in a low, urgent voice. “Just follow my lead, okay?”

“What?” Patrick asks blearily, rubbing his eyes to try to get Pete into focus. Everything is even blurrier than usual.

“You really can’t see well,” Pete says, “you’re always squinting, I’m going to work on stealing you glasses.”

“What?” Patrick asks again. He’s not thinking well enough for this yet.

“This is a golden opportunity and we can’t waste it, so just go with it, okay?”

“Where’s the coat?” Patrick sits up looking for it, then narrows his eyes. “Where are my clothes? Why are you dressed?”

There’s a rumbling sound that Patrick places as horses approaching.

Pete says, “Curtain rises, show must go on,” and darts off, hat and coat in place.

“Pete!” Patrick hisses after him angrily, and then turns to look for his clothes. “Where the actual fuck—” he mutters, and cuts off abruptly when Pete starts screaming for help.

Patrick almost falls into the river, he stumbles out from under the bridge so quickly. Which puts him right in view of an enormous entourage of palace guards surrounding an impressive golden carriage drawn by four white horses. All of which have come to a stop because Pete is signaling a frantic need for help from the middle of the road.

Patrick freezes as all eyes look at him, in his complete and utter nakedness, and then instinctively shoves his hands in front of the most important bits to cover.

A man sticks his head out of the coach and sputters, “What is the meaning of this?” and then boggles at the naked Patrick.

Patrick would like the ground to swallow him up _any second now_.

“Oh, Your Majesty!” exclaims Pete, hurrying closer to Patrick so the man can see him.

The man who is apparently the King.

Gaping at naked Patrick.

 _Any second now_.

“Here you see before you my master, the Marquis of Carabas, in all of his magnificence,” proclaims Pete grandly, and then bows very low.

Patrick considers kicking him but he’s not sure he could do it and preserve any modesty.

“Why doesn’t he have any clothes on?” asks the King in confusion.

“Forsooth,” says Pete, “my master the Marquis was swimming in the river, to refresh himself after his long journey before seeking an audience with your fantastic Majesty. But, alas, whilst he was swimming, someone stole his clothes!”

A woman’s face appears next to the King’s, looking at Patrick with open curiosity. “Oh, no, how awful!”

“Stolen by whom?” asks a palace guard suspiciously. “Where were you when your master’s clothes were stolen?”

“Making him breakfast, of course,” Pete responds indignantly. “And I have no knowledge of the thieves you have on your land. Never has my master been exposed to such lawlessness, not since the day he saved me from the vicious attack of six highwaymen. Single-handedly. Had this thief not chosen my master at his most vulnerable moment of _complete and utter nakedness_ —as you see him here—” Pete pauses in the tale he’s spinning to indicate how very naked Patrick remains.

“It’s okay,” Patrick says loudly, to make sure the King can hear him. “I’m sure I’ll be able to find my clothes. I bet they’re not far away. I bet I can track down the thief and bring him to justice.”

“That is just like my master,” Pete says to the King. “Taking justice into his own hands.”

 _Justice_ is not what is currently in Patrick’s hands, is what he wants to point out. “I bet the thief is closer than we think,” says Patrick tightly. “I bet if I start right now I’ll find him immediately.”

Pete smiles at him cheerfully, winks, then turns back to the King. “Perhaps my lord is right. Your guard does seem incapable of keeping thieves out of the woods—”

“Nonsense!” thunders the King. “My guard is eminently capable! I will not have noblemen going in search of thieves on my land, when we have people to take care of that.” To Patrick’s horror, the door to the coach swings open. “My lord Marquis, you must ride with us back to the castle, I insist. I will provide you with clothes once we get there.”

Patrick stares.

“Come along,” the King huffs impatiently.

“Don’t keep him waiting,” Pete murmurs under his breath.

Patrick glares at him. “I’m going to kill you,” he promises darkly.

“Have a good time,” says Pete, and gives him a little wave.

Patrick, with as much dignity as he can muster, edges his way into the carriage. He sits opposite the King and the woman next to him and puts his hands protectively in his lap. The woman stares at him openly, hiding giggles into her hand. Patrick can’t think of anything bad enough to do to Pete once he gets him alone again.

“This is my daughter,” the King gestures. “Princess Amora.”

“Hi,” Patrick says awkwardly.

“Hello,” Princess Amora says to him, smiling widely.

Patrick clears his throat and squints out the window of the carriage. He wants to be excited about riding in a _carriage_. He used to fantasize about this on the bluff. But he didn’t think he’d be naked in the carriage.

The King says, “I want to thank you for the gifts you sent ahead.”

“The flowers were beautiful,” the Princess gushes at him. “I loved them so, so much.”

“The playing cards were most intriguing,” says the King, regarding him thoughtfully.

“Well,” Patrick says heartily, cursing Pete creatively in the depths of his soul, “what I always say is that all lives need more fun and games.”

“Indeed,” the King says, nodding solemnly like Patrick just said something very profound and deep. “Indeed.”

Princess Amora sighs at him and smiles.

And Patrick—Patrick rides a carriage into a castle courtyard.

Naked.

If his family could see him now.

***

Patrick is shown into a room larger and more magnificent than anything he’s ever dared to imagine. And that room is _just one of a series_. He has been given _a whole group of rooms_. Patrick doesn’t know what to make of them. They all have sleek shiny floors thrown over with luxuriously soft fabrics, and windows taller than Patrick, and carvings on the ceiling of fruits and flowers and woodland animals. The furniture gleams so much Patrick has to touch it to make sure it’s wood, because it seems unbelievable, and there are more blankets on the bed than Patrick has ever seen in one place at one time, and the walls are hung with gorgeous art— _actual paintings_. Patrick has only ever read about paintings, and here they are now, all around him, a series of frowning royal faces, and beautiful mimics of meadows and rivers and forests. Someone handed Patrick a soft, fuzzy cloak when he got to the castle, and he’s wrapped in it, gaping at the paintings on the wall, when someone else comes in and bows smartly at him and says, “My lord, your bath is prepared.”

 _His bath_.

Patrick follows the servant into a room the centerpiece of which is an enormous bathtub, big enough for Patrick to stretch out full-length. Patrick closes his mouth so he can try to pretend better that he’s totally used to taking baths like this.

“Will you be needing further assistance, my lord?” the servant asks him.

Patrick’s had his fair share of embarrassment for the day. He doesn’t want to add to it by having the servant _bathe_ him. He says, “I’m fine,” and waits for the servant to leave before stepping out of the cloak and into the tub.

The water is _warm_. He yelps in surprise but then, after a moment, realizes that this is a thousand times better. Of _course_ bathwater ought to be warm. Patrick sinks into it, and it rises up to his chin, and he sighs and closes his eyes. Pete’s an idiot, and the fact that this bath is amazing doesn’t change that. But still. Maybe he gets why Pete was angling so hard to get them into the castle.

The thought of Pete has him opening his eyes and frowning overhead. Crystals rain down from the ceiling toward him, catching sunlight and making rainbows dance all around him. Where is Pete? Is Pete coming back? What if Pete leaves him all alone in this castle and Patrick never sees him again? Patrick would have no idea how to find him. Patrick would be stuck here playing cards with the King and letting the Princess giggle at him, and there would be _no Pete_.

Patrick gnaws at his thumbnail and tries to calm himself down. _You’re mine_ , Pete had said. _I’m not going to go anywhere without you ever again_. He wasn’t going to leave him here all alone. He was totally going to come back. He’d always come back.

Patrick takes a deep breath and gets himself out of the bath. The water has cooled around him, and he shivers a little in the air, hurrying to put on the clothes that had been left out for him. The clothes are ridiculously grand, much nicer than anything he could even have imagined, absurdly soft against his skin. Patrick smooths his hands over the curve of the embroidered waistcoat across his belly. He feels silly in these clothes. The waistcoat has _hummingbirds_ on it.

Whatever. It’s a gift from the King. He’s going to be expected to be wearing the stupid hummingbirds.

Patrick, dressed, wanders back out into his rooms. He doesn’t know what to do with himself now. There are no servants hovering around, and he doesn’t feel confident enough to just go out into the castle proper. He’s going to be expected to _know_ things. He’s a _Marquis_.

Being a Marquis is the _worst_.

Except for the view out the gleaming many-paned windows. That’s pretty fantastic.

The windowsill is broad enough for Patrick to perch on, and he’s got his head tipped against the window, looking out it avidly, when there’s a knock on the door. He’s contemplating the fact that he can see farther than ever before, far enough to see jagged mountains so much taller than the hills in the distance back home, and he jumps at the knock and has a momentary panic, scrambling off the windowsill. How’s a Marquis supposed to stand? He clasps his hands in front of him, behind him, in front of him again, back behind him, and then calls, “Come in!” before he can change his mind again.

It's Pete who walks through the door. More like jauntily bounces through the door. “My lord Marquis,” he says, with a silly bow, and Patrick is so happy to see him that he snaps, “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Missed you, too,” says Pete, straightening, and then he looks at Patrick and goes still, blinking at him.

“What?” Patrick asks self-consciously, and tugs at the waistcoat.

“Look at you,” Pete says, sounding awestruck.

“Don’t say anything about the birds,” Patrick warns him grouchily. “Am I not wearing everything right?”

“You are wearing everything _so_ right,” Pete says hoarsely.

Patrick stops fidgeting, because Pete’s tone of voice is a tone that makes him pay attention, a tone Patrick’s only ever heard gasping in his ear when he had a hand on Pete’s cock.

Pete clears his throat and gives his head a shake, catlike. “Look what I brought you,” he says, walking toward Patrick with his hand outstretched.

Patrick doesn’t want a gift, Patrick wants that tone of voice back. He accepts the gift, though, tipping his head at it.

“Look,” Pete says. “They’re glasses. Like this.” He takes the gift back, unfolds them, and slides them carefully onto Patrick’s nose, in front of his eyes, around his ears. “Okay.” Pete takes a step back. “I had to kind of guess. Can you see me?”

He _can_. Much sharper and clearer than he’s ever seen him before. Pete is _devastatingly_ beautiful. Fuck, Patrick could have done without this new knowledge. He draws in a startled breath and drinks Pete in.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Pete says with a smile, and then reaches forward to turn Patrick around. “Look out the window.”

Patrick does, and stares in shock at the mountains in the distance. They’re so clear he can see _snow_ on top of them. “Hang on,” Patrick says. He takes the glasses off, looks at the fuzzy mountains, then carefully puts them back on. “Did you enchant these?”

“No,” Pete says, sounding fond. “They’re glasses, Patrick. They help you see better.”

“They’re fantastic,” Patrick breathes, tipping his head to look and look and look at everything beyond the window. “You should keep them for yourself.”

“I don’t need them,” Pete says.

“Oh, right,” Patrick remembers. He turns from the window back to the room, so he can look up at the carved ceilings and be astonished by the level of detail. “You’ve got fancy cat eyes.”

“Yes. You’re the one who needs the glasses.”

“I don’t _need_ them—” Patrick starts.

“Yes, you do. This is how everyone else sees the world, Trick.”

Patrick gapes at Pete. “Like _this_? That can’t be true.”

Pete smiles at him, very soft and small, and whispers, “Hi,” to him.

“Hi,” Patrick whispers back, not wanting to break this spell between them. He thinks Pete might be about to kiss him.

There’s another knock on the door, and Patrick frowns. Why are there so many fucking people in this castle?

“Go away,” Patrick calls.

“Patrick,” Pete says. “You can’t—Hang on!” he shouts. “We’re coming!” He bounds over to the door to tug it open.

Another servant says, “Is the Marquis coming to dinner?”

“He is,” Pete says. “Yes. Absolutely. He will be right down. Give us a minute.” Pete closes the door and turns back to Patrick.

Patrick scowls. “I don’t want to go to dinner.”

“Yes, you do, you’re starving,” Pete says readily.

He _is_ starving, damn it. “Pete, I don’t know how to be a marquis,” Patrick complains.

“You’ve been doing spectacularly so far,” Pete tells him, and starts doing something complicated with the soft scarf Patrick threw around his neck.

“I sat naked in a carriage like an idiot,” Patrick says. “By the way, I haven’t forgiven you for that.”

Pete makes an unconcerned _hmm_ sound, watching whatever he’s doing with his hands.

“You’re supposed to say, ‘I’m so sorry, Patrick, naturally you didn’t want your first ride in a carriage to be with your dick flopping around unattractively.’”

“I’m sure it wasn’t unattractive,” Pete says, “I’ve seen it.”

“Would you want to ride around in a carriage with your dick hanging out?” Patrick demands.

Pete finishes whatever he’s doing and meets his eyes. “Let me tell you, carriage rides where your dick ends up out of your pants are usually the best carriage rides, in my experience.”

“Yeah, well, not in mine,” sulks Patrick.

“Come here,” Pete says, and takes his hand and tugs him through a door into the next room, where he stands Patrick in front of the mirror hung on the wall. It’s a much bigger and cleaner mirror than Patrick’s ever seen before. His reflection blinks back at him, completely unrecognizable, sleek and well-dressed and wearing _glasses_. Pete’s knotted the scarf in some elaborate fluffy arrangement and tucked the end of it into the waistcoat. While Patrick gazes at himself in surprise, Pete finger-combs his hair, and then he kisses behind Patrick’s ear, and then he rests his chin on Patrick’s shoulder, taking his hat off of his head so he can fit there. His cat ears twitch once. “Behold,” he says softly. “The Marquis of Carabas.”

Patrick meets Pete’s eyes in the mirror. “Pete,” he says helplessly, because he doesn’t know how to put into words how out of his element he feels.

“I’m going to be right there, and you’re going to be spectacular, because you’re a spectacular person, and someday I’m going to get that through your head. Now let’s go, Marquis.” Pete butts his head briefly against the curve of Patrick’s neck, then replaces his hat and sweeps out of the room.

Patrick looks at his reflection for a moment longer in this grand mirror, resplendent in these well-made clothes, made even sharper by the _glasses_. And then he follows.

***

The dining room is bigger than Patrick’s family’s entire house. The table can seat more people than Patrick’s really even seen in his life. And it is _filled_ with food. Patrick knows he’s staring at the feast and can’t help it. He doesn’t even know what all this food _is_.

“Oh, good,” the King says when he walks into the room, with Pete at his elbow. “We can start eating now.”

“Did I keep you waiting?” Patrick asks. Pete, a hand caught subtly in the back of the brass-buttoned coat Patrick’s been given, tugs him to the chair opposite the Princess, pulls it out for him. “Sorry.”

“Not at all,” says the Princess with a smile. “We didn’t mind.”

Patrick sits and Pete nudges the chair forward for him, just as the Princess says, “No offense, but I think I liked you better without the clothes,” and arches an eyebrow at him.

Pete chokes, doubles over coughing.

Patrick just stares at Princess Amora.

The King says severely, “What is wrong with your servant? Is he okay?”

Patrick wants to say, _What’s wrong with your daughter, I think she just said she likes my dick._ Instead he says, “I’m sure he’s fine.”  

Pete coughs a little more, then manages, “Sorry, Your Majesty,” and steps discreetly off to the side.

There’s a flurry of activity all around Patrick, and when it’s done his plate is piled full with things he’s only vaguely sure he recognizes, but they all smell delicious. And there’s a ruby liquid in a crystal glass that Patrick is fairly sure is wine. _Wine_. Patrick licks his lips and remembers himself enough to spy on how the King and Princess are eating. They are eating…boredly. Without interest. Fuck that, thinks Patrick, and tackles everything with gusto. He tries everything on his plate and then works out a systematic hierarchy from least favorite to most favorite. He eats so much he totally forgets about the wine, which he was super-excited about, but by the time he finishes, he realizes that the King and Princess are both staring at him, and he doesn’t feel like he can gulp down the wine after that.

He says, “Forgive me, it’s been a…long journey.”

“Yes, we can see that,” the King says slowly, as the servants clear away the plates and the wine.

Patrick tries not to be too sad.

The King continues, “Your servant was telling us how far you have traveled. Where are your lands again?”

Patrick considers an answer to this, then says, “That way,” and randomly waves his hand in a direction.

The Princess laughs a tinkling little laugh that alarms Patrick.

The King says, “La, how droll you are, sir.”

“Yes,” Patrick says. “That is absolutely what I’m known for. Drollness.”

“Why have you been away from your lands so long, if you don’t mind my asking?” inquires the King.

Patrick very much minds him asking. He has no fucking clue why a Marquis would be away from his lands. He says, “Jousting,” and then curses himself.

“Oh, do you joust?” asks the King with interest.

“No, I…I witness jousting. I supervise jousting. I… _judge_ jousting. You know. Give tips, come up with the scoring, that sort of thing.”

“What sort of jousting has scoring?” The King sounds intrigued.

“It’s Babylonian jousting,” Patrick says, naming the first exotic-sounding place he can remember reading about.

“That makes sense,” the King says, “Babylonian jousting. Hmm.”

Patrick can’t believe he got away with that. Desperate to turn the conversation away from himself, he says, “So, Princess Amora, what sort of things do you like to do for fun?”

She looks delighted to be addressed by him. “I am a biologist,” she says to him.

“No, you’re not,” the King frowns at her.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick says as politely as possible, “I don’t know what that is.”

“I study science. _You_ know. I have a particular expertise in… _anatomy_.” She says this very meaningfully.

Pete starts coughing again behind Patrick.

The King gives him a disapproving look. “Are you quite sure there’s nothing wrong with your servant? He’d better not introduce illness to this castle.”

“It’s just a hairball,” Patrick says blandly.

Pete coughs more.

“Shall we adjourn for dessert?” Princess Amora asks, getting to her feet.

Patrick stumbles to his feet in reaction, and the Princess and the King start heading out of the dining room, and Patrick goes to follow, then realizes Pete isn’t at his elbow and stops and looks back at him.

Pete makes a tiny _go ahead_ motion with his hands.

Patrick frowns and points his middle finger in Pete’s direction, as discreetly as possible.

Pete winks, smile wide, because Pete’s an asshole who Patrick hates a lot.

“My lord Marquis?” the Princess calls for him.

“Coming,” Patrick responds, resigned to this evening.

He follows the Princess and the King into another enormous room, this one hung with tapestries that he immediately goes to admire, because he’s never seen such intricate weaving. There’s a fire crackling in the room, making it oppressively hot, especially since it’s hot enough outside that Patrick has no idea why a fire is even necessary. The King sits close up against the fire and starts shuffling a deck of cards.

He says, “My lord, perhaps you would like to play, given your gift?”

Patrick watches the King shuffle, his stomach sinking. “Um.”

“Oh, please, let’s,” Princess Amora says to him. “Do you play bridge?”

Patrick only knows one card game, because it’s the only one his brothers ever played. He was not allowed to play with them, but he knows the rules from watching avidly when he was younger, when he still wanted to be included in his brothers’ games before realizing what assholes they were.

Patrick says hesitantly, “I would prefer to play bullshit.”

The King looks up at him, startled. “What?”

But Princess Amora smiles at him and says, “Okay, you’re on.”

***

It’s a long night of teaching the King how to play bullshit and dealing with Princess Amora flirting with him, and Patrick is very tired by the time he’s allowed to go up to bed.

Pete’s sitting in a chair in Patrick’s bedroom with a book when Patrick enters. He lifts an eyebrow at him and says, “Good night, Marquis?”

“Fucking awful,” Patrick complains, and collapses back onto his bed, and then says, “Hmm,” because he’s never lain in a bed so comfortable before.

“Better night now?” Pete asks knowingly, tugging Patrick’s boots off of him.

“The bed is good,” Patrick says. “The boots fucking suck.”

“They looked good on you, though,” Pete tells him, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

Patrick yawns. “Whatever.”

“Plus you got to eat a lot of really delicious food,” says Pete, undoing the complicated knot he did at Patrick’s neck.

Patrick opens his eyes. “Oh, yeah. That was good. Did you get to eat?”

Pete smiles down at him, slipping the fabric out from around Patrick’s neck. “When you were done.”

“Good,” says Patrick.

Pete moves away from Patrick to start tugging the blankets down on the bed. “The Princess likes you.”

“The Princess is terrifying,” Patrick says fervently.

Pete laughs. “She’d just eat you with a spoon. I don’t blame her. Get into bed.”

Patrick gets into bed, nuzzling at the pillow. “This pillow is ridiculous.”

“Nice, right?” says Pete, and pulls the blankets up over Patrick, then carefully takes his glasses off. “Okay. Sweet dreams, Marquis.” Pete gently kisses the top of Patrick’s head.

“What?” Patrick frowns. “Where are you going?”

“Servants’ quarters. It would never do for me to be sleeping with the Marquis.”

“What?” Patrick sits up abruptly. “What are you _talking_ about? Of course you’re sleeping with me!”

“You’re the Marquis of Carabas,” Pete tells him.

“No, I’m _not_ ,” Patrick insists.

“Yes, you are.” Pete is firm and uncharacteristically serious. “Good night, my lord.”

“Good _night_?” Patrick shouts after him, as Pete walks out of the room, like it’s _nothing_. Patrick picks up one of the pillows on the bed and flings it after Pete, who darts past it, closing the door. “Asshole,” Patrick mumbles, and falls back onto the bed. He’s going to have to have a serious talk with Pete in the morning about this Marquis nonsense. Sure, the bed’s nice and the food was fantastic and he likes the warm baths but also, like, he likes Pete more. He needs to get that through Pete’s head.

Patrick falls asleep, groggy from the food and the adventuring and the warm bath and the comfortable bed.

Patrick wakes to thunder.

“Fuck,” he curses, putting his pillow over his head. He _hates_ thunderstorms. He knows it’s stupid and childish but he _hates_ them.

He gives up trying to sleep and gets up and walks over to the chair where Pete had been sitting. The book is still there, and Patrick picks it up curiously, flipping it open. It’s not a story, just short phrases flowing together, and there are notes scrawled in the margin. Patrick frowns and looks reflectively at the quill by the chair, wondering if that’s Pete’s handwriting. Then he remembers his glasses, gets up to retrieve them, and curls onto the bed with the book. He finds himself reading the notes in the margins more than anything else in the book.

And then there’s a scratching at the door. Patrick looks at the door, thinking maybe he imagined it, and jumps at a particularly loud thunderclap. But then when the noise fades the scratching comes again, followed by a _mrowr_ , and Patrick scrambles over himself to answer the door.

Pete the cat walks into the room, tail held high, and Patrick closes the door after him, and when he looks back Pete is a human and looking at him uncertainly.

“I thought the servant couldn’t sleep with the Marquis,” Patrick says sourly.

“You hate thunderstorms,” Pete replies softly.

Patrick doesn’t know what to say to that. He _does_ hate thunderstorms.

“Come to bed,” Pete says, and takes Patrick’s hand and pulls him gently back to the bed. He takes Patrick’s glasses off and then curls up next to him, head on his chest, and Patrick scratches at his cat ears until he starts purring. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and butts his head against Patrick. “I’m sorry I left you alone for the thunderstorm.”

“Don’t leave me alone,” Patrick whispers back. He wants it to sound commanding and sure but he thinks it just sounds like he’s begging, and it doesn’t help when it thunders and he jerks in reaction.

“Shh,” Pete breathes. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

Patrick takes a deep breath and strokes Pete’s tail, listening to Pete’s purrs. “I can totally handle thunder,” he says after a moment, feeling ridiculous.

“I know you can,” Pete says sleepily. “You can handle anything. You were amazing tonight at dinner. And that hairball comment was pretty great, too.”

Patrick chuckles. “What were you reading tonight when I came in?”

“Poetry.” Pete yawns, stretching against Patrick before snuggling in closer. “I stole it from the castle’s library. They’ve got a decent poetry collection here.”

 _Poetry_. Patrick turns that over in his head. “It’s pretty,” Patrick says. “Are those your notes in the book?”

“Mmm,” Pete answers. “Don’t tell.”

“They’re nice words. You have nice words.”

“You don’t have to say that,” Pete says.

“I’m not. I mean, I mean it.”

“Can you scratch my ears again?” Pete changes the subject.

Patrick lets him, shifting his hand to scratch behind Pete’s ears. Pete purrs against him, breaths evening out, clearly dropping toward sleep. “Pete,” Patrick whispers.

Pete makes a small inquisitive sound.

“This Marquis thing. Can we talk about it?”

“Sure thing, Patrick,” says Pete blurrily. “In the morning. Go to sleep.”

And, even with the thunder outside, Patrick falls asleep, Pete tucked warm and purring beside him.

***

There’s a knock on the door, and in a flash there’s a cat on his chest instead of a person.

And then the door opens and it’s the fucking Princess.

“Oh,” she says airily. “You’re not out of bed yet.”

“What?” Patrick yelps, trying to pull the blanket up to his chin, which dislodges Pete, who leaps off his chest and stalks to the end of the bed.

“Aww, you have a kitty,” the Princess says, and reaches out to scratch under Pete’s chin.

Jealousy internally combusts within Patrick, that anyone should touch Pete but him. Luckily, Pete seems to feel the same way, because Pete meows and picks his way back up the bed to sit by Patrick’s head and glower at the Princess, tail tapping a displeased rhythm against the pillow.

“He’s picky about who he lets touch him,” Patrick says.

The Princess shrugs. “He’s a cat. What’s his name?”

“Pete.”

“Your cat’s name is Pete?” The Princess sounds dubious.

“So?” Patrick retorts defensively.

“It’s just a funny name for a cat. You are a funny person, Marquis.” The Princess regards him reflectively.

“Am not,” Patrick denies, which was probably the most childish thing he could have said.

The Princess smiles at him. “I have convinced my father of the most exciting thing.”

Patrick doubts he’s going to find it exciting. “Really?” he says dubiously.

“We are going to visit your castle!” exclaims the Princess.

Pete, who had been licking his front paw, puts it down to look sharply at the Princess.

Patrick says, “Oh. Wow. That sounds, like, so awesome.”

“Right?” says the Princess, and grins at him. “Silly of you to be modest, I’ve seen it all already, remember?” She winks at him.

“It’s not…proper,” Patrick manages.

“Propriety is so overrated, my lord,” she says, on her way out the door.

Pete is immediately a person again, as soon as the door closes. “She’s something else,” he remarks. “It’s kind of hot.”

“It’s not hot. It’s annoying. Wait. Do you find her hot? You’re not going to fuck her, are you?”

Pete rolls his eyes as he gets out of bed. “Patrick.”

“I wouldn’t approve of that,” Patrick says, feeling foolish, but he really, really _wouldn’t_.

“Relax,” Pete says, putting Patrick’s glasses on him. “I’m not going to fuck your Princess.” He wanders off into the next room.  

“She isn’t my Princess!” Patrick calls after him.

Pete comes back dripping wet. Apparently he’d just flung water onto his face. He puts his hat over his bedraggled ears and says, “Okay, Trickster. I have got to get you a castle.”

Patrick boggles at him. “ _What_?”

“The Princess wants to see your castle, right? Not even euphemistically.” Pete frowns. “I don’t think.”  

“No. Pete. Let’s just stop this now. Let’s put an end to the Marquis thing.”

“Don’t be silly,” Pete says. “Look how far we’ve come.”

“Pete,” Patrick says, frustrated.

“When you get in the carriage, head toward the mountains,” Pete tells him, righting the rumpled clothing he slept in. “Give me a few hours, if you can.”

“Pete, listen to yourself. How are you going to find me a _castle_?”

“I can’t wait to say ‘I told you so,’” Pete says lightly, smoothing his coat over his tail. “Have a good day, my sweet sparrow, I’ll see you in a bit.” Pete walks out of the room.

Patrick’s been awake twenty minutes and he’s already lost all control of his day. “What the fuck,” he huffs, and decides maybe a warm bath will make him feel better.

***

Patrick has to pretend to be _so delighted_ that the King and the Princess are going to visit his castle. He has to pretend not to totally be freaking out about how _he has no fucking castle_. Pete is delusional and today is the day when their house of cards comes crashing down around their heads and probably they’re both going to be executed. Only Pete’s magic and he’ll turn into a cat and run away before the noose tightens around his neck, so only Patrick is going to hang.

A week ago he was a lonely miller’s son with a tomcat hanging around him for food, and now he’s sitting in a carriage with the King and the Princess pretending to drive to his castle.

 _What the actual fuck_.

“Tell us all about your castle,” the Princess says, eyes sparkling at him.

Patrick can’t figure out if she knows he’s lying about being a Marquis or she’s just really into him. The former seems much more likely. “It’s like, I don’t know, very castle-like,” Patrick says.

“You’ve got such an incredible way with words,” the Princess says, with a breathless sigh.

“Yeah,” says Patrick tightly, unsure if he’s being mocked or adored, and hating both options.

“How far is it to your castle?” asks the King.

“Oh, like, not far. Also not close. Like, a distance that is neither far nor close,” says Patrick.

“So poetic,” says the Princess.

Patrick frowns disapprovingly in her direction but she doesn’t seem to get the hint.

The King pokes his head out the window of the carriage and calls out, “You there!” presumably to someone on the road. The carriage slows to a halt.

Patrick also sticks his head out the window, because it’s oppressively hot in the carriage and he feels a little queasy. He thought carriages were going to be much more fun when he used to just watch for them on the road.

There are a couple of people walking along the road. He doesn’t know these people but he recognizes them nonetheless. They could be his parents. They’re the sort of people he spent his whole life with and expected to spend his whole life with. And then his father gave him a stray cat who turned out to be a magical person and now he’s riding in a carriage with royalty.

“Good day to you,” the King says pleasantly to his subjects.

Frankly, they look unimpressed. They’re just trying to walk home and some rich guy in a carriage is bothering them.

“You wouldn’t happen to know whose lands these are, would you?” asks the King.

And the woman shrugs and says, “They belong to the Marquis of Carabas.”

Patrick squeaks.

The Princess gives him a speculative look.

The King says in obvious surprise, “Oh, really? Interesting. Thank you,” and then leans back into the carriage.

The carriage starts off again, and the King says to Patrick, “Why didn’t you tell me we were already on your lands?”

“I…wanted it to be a surprise?” offers Patrick.

“And what a splendid surprise it is.” The Princess purrs this at him, like she ought to be a cat, too.

“So curious,” the King muses, “that I have never heard of you before, when you own so much land.”

“I’ve been away for a long time,” Patrick says.

“Right,” says the King slowly. “Babylonian jousting.”

Patrick winces at how terrible this lie is and how now he’s stuck with it. “Yup.”

“How many years were you Babylonian jousting?” asks Princess Amora, her eyes blinking with wide innocence. “Were you an apprentice there?”

Patrick glowers at her. “I was practically born Babylonian jousting.”

Princess Amora’s lips twitch at him.

Patrick really misses Pete.

Pete suddenly shows up outside the window of the carriage.

Patrick stares at him.

Pete gives him a little wave.

Patrick goes to the window of the carriage to lean out it. Pete is trotting next to them on a pretty gray horse, looking for all the world like he knows what he’s doing and is totally supposed to be on top of a pretty gray horse.

“What are you doing?” Patrick hisses in astonishment.

“Hello, my lord,” Pete replies, grinning.

“Who is that?” the King demands.

“It’s my servant,” Patrick says. “My incredibly annoying servant.”

Pete grins and grins. “Brought you something,” he says, and hands a hat out to Patrick. A wide-brimmed hat with a curling feather. Just like the one that got destroyed.

Patrick leans across the jostling distance between them to grab it in amazement. “Where did you get this?”

“I stopped at home for you, of course.” Pete shifts his eyes to the Princess and the King, who are both watching him, the King gaping and the Princess bemused. “Your Majesty, Your Highness, everything is in order for your visit. With your permission, I am happy to escort you the rest of the way.”

“Please,” the King says, “lead the way.”

Pete bobs his head respectfully and glances at Patrick, his eyes crinkling with a smile. “Your lordship.”

Patrick huffs at him and sits back, clutching his feather hat to him. “He’s very annoying,” Patrick says again, but he knows he’s grinning like an idiot as he settles the hat on his head.

***

Patrick has no idea what to make of Pete’s apparent confidence that there’s a castle at the end of this journey. He decides to just sit back and let it play out. So far Pete’s managed to get the Marquis of Carabas all the way to dinner with the King and Princess. Maybe Pete can pull off the rest of this scheme, too. Patrick’s never gambled in his life but he knows he’d never bet against Pete.

Still, even though he’s expecting something like a castle to come out of the mists that have descended as they’ve climbed up into the mountains, he doesn’t expect the castle that appears, clinging to the edge of the mountain, hanging out over a valley below, wreathed in turrets and spires. It takes Patrick’s breath away.

“ _Oh_ ,” the Princess gasps softly from her seat across from him. “What a beautiful castle, my lord Marquis.”

Patrick agrees. He kind of loves this castle, in its cool, lush pine tree forest, the air sharp and crisp around it, and candlelight glowing from its windows in the gathering twilight.

Patrick’s vaguely aware that Pete helps the King and the Princess out of the carriage, and appears to be organizing a small army of servants to take the King and Princess into the castle. But Patrick can’t look away from this enchanted place in front of him.

“Patrick,” whispers Pete in his ear. “Psst.”

Patrick looks away from the castle. “Pete—”

“Shh.” Pete puts a finger on Patrick’s lips. “Come inside, hmm? And act like you own the place.”

“Oh, yeah, that’ll be easy,” Patrick says, as he hops his way out of the carriage.

He follows Pete into the castle. The entrance hall is enormous and airy, the ceiling soaring high over his head. Patrick tips his head back, gaping at the roof. It has _glass_ in it. “Pete—” he starts.

“They’re skylights,” Pete answers. “This way.”

“Hang on,” Patrick says, dazed by how grand this place is. The staircase curves upward, gleaming, and everything around them is elaborate and _gold_. “What—” Servants bustle past them on the stairs, bowing as they go past, saying things like, _Welcome home, my lord_ , and _Good evening, my lord_. Patrick feels a little dizzy. “ _Pete_.”

“This way,” Pete says, tugging at Patrick’s coat to pull him through a set of double doors. They’re in a very large, deserted bedroom, and Pete closes and locks the doors behind them. Then he sweeps his hat off to free his cat ears.

Patrick says, “I’m confused, am I actually the Marquis of Carabas and I never knew?”

Pete laughs, looking smug with pleasure. “It’s good, right?”

“How did you _do_ this?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Pete says. “I’m very charming.”

“You charmed people into giving you a _castle_?”

“No. This castle I stole.”

“Stole?” echoes Patrick.

“Kind of. It used to belong to an ogre.”

“Huh?” Too much is happening for Patrick to process. He looks blankly at Pete.

Pete smiles at him. “Hi,” he says. “I like your hat.”

“My cat stole it for me,” Patrick says.

“He did,” Pete agrees, and hugs him, arching against him and rubbing in a very catlike manner that nonetheless has Patrick thinking bed-ward ideas. “How was your carriage ride?” Pete asks, head resting on Patrick’s shoulder.

Patrick gathers Pete’s coat up so his tail can swish without restriction, and Pete purrs happily in reaction. He says, “Boring. It was very boring. Tell me how you stole this castle from an ogre. An _ogre_?”

“They do exist, Patrick.”

“Cat-people exist, so, you know, I’m pretty open-minded these days.”

Pete huffs amusement into Patrick’s neck. “There was an ogre in this castle when I got here. Do you know what it’s like to have an ogre as a master? Not good. The servants were desperate to get rid of him. I said I’d do it for them if they pretended this castle belonged to the Marquis of Carabas for just a few days. And they said, ‘Well, how hot is this Marquis?’ And I said, ‘ _Super_ hot, like, hot like _burning_ —’”

“Pete,” Patrick sighs.

“—and they said, ‘Well, if he’s as hot as all that,’ and I said, ‘Plus, you should hear him sing,’ and they said, ‘Sold! We will pretend your Marquis has been here all along, if you can get rid of the ogre.’” Pete shrugs. “So I got rid of the ogre.”

“Uh,” says Patrick, “you’re leaving out the most important part.”

“No, I told you all about how hot you are.”

“That’s not the most important part,” Patrick says patiently. Maybe he’s getting used to conversing with Pete. “How’d you get rid of the ogre?”

“Tricked him into turning himself into a mouse.”

Patrick wrinkles his nose. “And then did you _eat_ him?”

“Hey, I was trying to leave this part out for you, you may recall.”

“Pete, did you _kill_ someone to get me this castle?”

“Relax. I put him a trap and hid him away. Someone’s bringing him some cheese every so often.”

Patrick isn’t sure if he believes this. Frankly, Patrick isn’t sure if he believes any part of this story. He scratches behind Pete’s cat ears and Pete purrs and butts against Patrick’s shoulder and Patrick closes his eyes and thinks that he could stand like this forever. He murmurs, “You looked good on that horse.”

Pete chuckles. “You’re all hot and dusty from the road,” he says, and kisses the side of Patrick’s neck as he straightens away from him. “Come here, I want to show you something.” He takes Patrick’s hand and tugs him farther into the room.

This bedroom is enormous, even bigger than the bedroom he’d been given at the other castle, and Patrick had found that absurdly luxurious. This bedroom seems bigger than the entire barn back home.

And it connects to another room, with a huge bathtub nestled right in a little alcove of windows, looking out over the valley below.

“Look,” Pete says, as Patrick steps up to the windows and looks up and down the valley. It’s greener than anything he’s ever seen before, impossibly green, he didn’t know they made this shade of green, and fog drifts through it, and stars are breaking out in the sky, and it’s _magic_. “It kind of reminded me of your bluff,” Pete says. “I thought you’d like the view.”

“It’s so beautiful,” Patrick breathes.

“Yeah? You like it?”

Pete asks it uncertainly, like there’s any doubt how much Patrick _love_ this. He looks at him in astonishment. “Of course I like it. Look at it.”

“Good,” Pete says, with a little smile. “I’ve got a surprise for you for dinner tonight.” He dips his hand into the water in the tub. “You should take a bath. It’s the perfect temperature. The ogre’s clothes aren’t going to fit you, but I’ve improvised a bit of an outfit for you, it’s on the bed.”

“Where are you going?” Patrick asks, as Pete heads briskly out of the room.

“We’re having a royal feast tonight,” Pete says. Patrick watches him put his hat back on. “I’ve got supervising to do.”

“You could stay and have a bath with me,” Patrick suggests, because that sounds heavenly.

“What would your Princess say?” asks Pete.

“Fuck her,” says Patrick.

Pete laughs like that’s a joke and says, “See you later, morning dove,” as he leaves the bedroom.

***

Pete’s surprise is _music_.

And honestly Patrick doesn’t notice anything else about the meal—not the food, definitely not the King and the Princess—because there is _music_.

Patrick’s never heard music in person before like this. He gapes at intricate instruments, at the sounds that come out of them, at the way they blend together to form _more_ , somehow—Patrick can’t get over it. Patrick sits perched at the edge of his chair and listens and listens and _listens_.

“Hey,” Pete says to him softly, startling him, pulling him away from the music for the first time in what feels like _hours_.

When he looks around, there’s no one in the room but him and Pete and the musicians, so maybe it _has_ been hours.

“Where did everyone go?” Patrick asks.

“It’s late. They finished dinner and they went up to bed. You didn’t eat anything.” Pete puts a plate of food in Patrick’s hands. “I thought you’d enjoy the music, but I didn’t intend to distract you from everything else about the dinner. I’ll make sure it doesn’t start until the food’s done next time. You could at least have made _some_ conversation.”

“Shh,” Patrick says, shaking his head. “Who cares? _Listen_ to them.”

Pete smiles and sits next to him. “Eat something, or I’ll tell them to stop playing.”

Patrick eats blindly, without tasting, picking out snatches of melodies to try to remember for later. He wants to remember all of them, of course, but there are a special few he wants to lock away in his soul for later perusal.

Pete takes Patrick’s plate away, replaces it with a goblet that Patrick sips from without thinking. It’s something that sparkles on his tongue, like stars bursting. Patrick takes a gulp of it.

Pete says, “Slow down, that is very good champagne raided from the cellars.”

“Where did you find these people?” Patrick asks, ignoring Pete’s warning about the champagne in favor of another gulp.

“They work here,” Pete says. “When I found that out, I knew this was the castle for you.”

“Oh, were there lots of other options?” Patrick asks, with the tiny amount of sarcasm he can achieve when he’s busy staring at _music_.

Pete leaves him alone for a little while, lets him listen to the music, refills his goblet when he finishes it, then eventually says, “Patrick, they’re going to have to stop sometime. They’ve been playing a while now.”

“Wait. Wait.” Patrick shakes his head and closes his eyes when it sways a little bit.

“Too much champagne,” Pete says, taking the goblet out of his hand.

“No. Wait. I want them to play this song again.” Patrick says it urgently, because if he’s only got a few songs left he wants to make sure he hears this one again.

“Which song, Patrick?” Pete asks patiently.

“Tell them to stop for a second, I’ll sing it for them.”

“Oh, my, are we getting singing? I’m going to keep the champagne flowing,” remarks Pete, and then lifts his voice to carry to the musicians, “Hey, guys. Can we have one more song by special request, and then we’ll call it a night?”

The music stops, and Patrick takes a deep breath and listens to the melody he wants, strong in his head, and then he sings it for them, a _ba-de-dum-de-dum_ of the notes.

The musicians look vaguely surprised by his voice and then nod and start playing the requested song.

Patrick sighs happily, leaning forward to drink it in again.

“It’s a dance,” Pete says.

“What?” says Patrick.

“It’s a country dance. Don’t you know it?”

Patrick gives him a blank look.

“Your fucking family,” Pete sighs, then stands and offers his hand. “Come here.”

Patrick, after a moment of confusion, gives Pete his hand, lets himself be pulled up and into Pete’s arms.

“Like this,” Pete murmurs, nudging him around in a circle. “Hear that beat? Follow me.”

And then Patrick _does_ hear it. He understands exactly what Pete is saying. Pete whirls him in dizzying circles, spinning him to the beat, and when the song ends Patrick collapses, laughing, breathless, against Pete, letting Pete entirely hold him up. And Pete catches him, clasps him close. Patrick presses his face into Pete’s throat and closes his hands into Pete’s shirt and loves him so, so, _so_ much, Patrick can’t breathe with it, Pete gave him _music_. Pete is saying something to the musicians, probably thanking them, or saying how exceptional they were, or something, and Patrick—Patrick wants to feel just this way for the rest of his life.

“That was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” he mumbles against Pete.

Pete is silent for a moment, then Patrick feels him brush a kiss over his head. “Let’s get you to bed, Marquis.”

Patrick doesn’t want to go to bed, but he lets Patrick lead him up the stairs. Patrick is maybe less steady on his feet than he would like to pretend to be. He’s grateful Pete can remember which doors lead to his bedroom, too, because Patrick has no idea. Patrick’s not looking at anything but Pete and not hearing anything but music.

“Dance with me again,” Patrick says when they’re in the bedroom.

“There’s no music,” Pete says.

“There’s music. Don’t you hear the music?” Patrick hums the tune of the dance, pulling at Pete’s hands to try to get him to move into the steps.

Pete resists. Pete says thickly, “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Patrick smiles at him, feeling helpless about it. “I want to scream ‘I love you’ from the top of my lungs,” he sings, “but I’m afraid that someone else will hear me.” Patrick pitches toward Pete, mouths sloppily at his neck.

Pete says hoarsely, “Patrick,” and closes his hands into Patrick’s hair. “What did you just sing?”

Patrick lifts his head up and brushes his nose against Pete’s, pleased with himself. “I’m writing you a song. Do you like it?”

“Those are my words,” Pete chokes out.

“Uh-huh. I took the book with me.” Patrick reaches inside of the waistcoat he’s wearing, pulls the slim book of poetry out. “I’m going to put all your words into a song for you.”

Pete is staring at him. “ _Patrick_ ,” he says.

“I want to scream ‘I love you’ from the top of my lungs,” Patrick sings to him, and then, “Mmph,” when Pete devours him into a kiss, tackles him back onto the bed.

Patrick knocks Pete’s hat off his head, shoves his coat off of him, trying to meet Pete’s messy kisses as he does it.

Pete shudders, purring, as Patrick strokes a hand over his tail, and mutters, “I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve _you_ —”

“Shut up,” Patrick says, getting Pete’s shirt off so he can see the art on his chest. “Look what you _did_ for me.”

“Patrick,” Pete says, desperate and pleading, like Patrick’s not _right there_.

“You gave me music,” Patrick says, and kisses him fiercely. “You gave me _music_.”

“You gave _me_ music,” Pete protests.

“Yeah, this seems like a good idea for what we should do right now,” Patrick says breathlessly, “we should definitely have a fight about this.”

Pete props himself up, looking down at him. His dark hair is messy from Patrick’s hands, tousled so much that his cat ears are hidden in the thicket of it, and the pupils of his golden cat eyes are dilated in the low light, and he’s breathing hard, and he looks as beautiful as Patrick has ever seen anything in the whole wide world look. Pete thinks Patrick is so beautiful only because Pete doesn’t get to look at himself all day, Patrick thinks.  “Sing it again,” he pants.

Patrick sings it so quietly that it barely qualifies as singing, he doesn’t have enough breath to hit the notes. “I want to scream ‘I love you’ from the top of my lungs.”

Pete leans his forehead down to press against Patrick’s. “Patrick,” he says, again in that odd tone of voice, like Patrick’s not _right there_.

“I’m right here,” Patrick says. He settles his hands on Pete’s hips, reminding weights.

Pete takes a shaky breath, and then he kisses Patrick, slow and gentle, his eyes wide open. He never closes his eyes, never takes his eyes off of Patrick’s. He strips Patrick of the clothing of the Marquis of Carabas, lays him bare, maps his body like it’s art underneath him, his feline eyes unblinking, as Patrick arches and moans and begs for him, says his name brokenly, strokes Pete’s tail ruthlessly until Pete’s control snaps and he takes both of them in his hand and strokes.

He shifts, changing their angle, breaking eye contact to press his mouth against Patrick’s ear and whisper, “I want to scream ‘I love you’ from the top of my lungs.”

“…someone else will hear me,” Patrick manages, and then comes with Pete’s name on his lips.

Pete, after, is heavy on Patrick, sweaty and sticky, and he’s not purring.

Patrick, his afterglow shattered, frowns up at the ceiling and strokes Pete’s limp tail. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Pete mumbles into Patrick’s skin. “You’re so perfect. You’re the most perfect person.”

“Pete,” says Patrick in alarm. “You’ve been weird all night. Did you make some terrifying deal with the ogre?”

Pete chokes out a laugh against him. “No. No deal with the ogre.” Pete shifts, sliding off of Patrick enough to be able to look at him. He reaches out and brushes Patrick’s hair off his forehead. And, to Patrick’s relief, he starts purring.

“I don’t like it when you don’t purr,” he confesses, and tucks close to Pete so he can let those purrs vibrate through him.

“I never used to purr this much,” Pete replies, and takes advantage of the reversal of their usual position to pet his hands through Patrick’s hair.

“I never used to _anything_ ,” Patrick says. “I can’t comprehend how much you’ve changed my life.”

“For the better?” asks Pete.

“ _Yes_ , for the fucking better,” says Patrick. “I mean, it was a pretty low bar, but you’d changed my life for the better when you were still just a cat purring next to me in the hayloft.”

“And now you’re a Marquis with a castle,” says Pete.

“Now I’m a Patrick with a Pete,” Patrick corrects him.

Pete’s hand hitches in its rhythm, then resumes it. “Or am I a Pete with a Patrick?” he asks softly.

“Let’s fight about it in the morning,” Patrick suggests sleepily.

Pete presses his lips into Patrick’s hair in a kiss, leaves them there, murmurs, “Have it your way, sweetheart.”

Patrick falls asleep with the endearment singing through his brain.

***

Patrick wakes to Pete whispering, “Hey there, pigeon,” in his ear.

Patrick grunts into his pillow.

Pete keeps talking. “Listen. I ran a bath for you. The temperature should be perfect. You should get up and enjoy it.”

Patrick opens one eye and looks at Pete, who’s fully dressed, coat and hat in place. “What the fuck time is it?” he demands. “What’s the point of being the Marquis of Carabas if I can’t sleep all day?”

“I have to go set out breakfast for the King and the Princess,” Pete says. “And you should make an appearance since you were an abysmal host last night.”

“There was _music_ last night,” Patrick protests. “Who can talk when music is happening like that? Hey, can you bring me those musicians? I forgot to tell them thank you, or how amazing they are. They were so amazing. They were incredible. I need to tell them how incredible they were.”

“Your face pretty much said all of that already but I’ll tell them again,” Pete assures him. “Now. We kind of ruined your clothes last night so I’m going to scrounge up more, I’ll send someone up here with them, they’ll leave them on the bed for you, okay?”

“Uh-huh,” Patrick yawns into his pillow.

“Bath,” Pete reminds him, poking at him. “Perfect temperature water. Go see what this valley looks like in daytime.”

Patrick opens his eyes, squinting. “My head hurts.”

“That’s the champagne,” Pete says. “Drink a bunch of coffee at breakfast. Make sure you doctor it with cream and sugar. Also, here are your glasses.” Pete hands them across. “Okay—”

Patrick grabs Pete by his collar and holds him still long enough to kiss him.

Pete kisses him back gently, softly, before pulling back and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Have a good day.”

Patrick watches him leave the bedroom, and then forces himself out of bed. The bath _is_ the perfect temperature, and the view of the valley in sunlight is spectacular. Patrick admits to himself that he could get used to this. He looks at the blue, blue sky, at the birds wheeling past the window, and thinks of Pete calling him by bird names all the time. Patrick feels vaguely like one of those birds, perched here high in the air. He’s definitely flown a long way from home.

There’s clothing on the bed when he gets out of the bath, just as Pete promised. Patrick puts the clothes on and then goes downstairs, yawning, compelled by his growling stomach to go in search of food somewhere.

He finds the dining room. It contains food. It also unfortunately contains the King and the Princess, but oh, well, can’t win ‘em all.

It doesn’t contain Pete, although it contains a bunch of other servants. Patrick frowns a little, because he would much prefer to have Pete around to make sure he doesn’t make a fucking idiot of himself over here.

“Good morning, sir,” the King greets him heartily.

Way too heartily. Patrick winces at the escalation in his headache and goes in search of the coffee Pete told him to find. A servant, looking appalled at him, waves him away from the serving pieces and Patrick takes the hint and lets himself be followed to the table with coffee in tow.

“Hi,” Patrick says, and figures he’s supposed to apologize for his behavior the night before. “Sorry about last night. I…really like music.” He can’t even imagine a better explanation than that.

The Princess smiles at him, more kindly than she’s ever smiled at him before, none of that teasing flirtation that feels vaguely mocking to Patrick. “That was obvious,” she says.

Patrick’s a little thrown by this new version of the Princess. He occupies himself trying to put enough cream and sugar into his coffee.

The King says, “Amora and I are greatly satisfied by your castle.”

“Oh, good,” says Patrick, sniffing at the coffee like that will give him a clue as to whether he’s prepared it properly. “Me, too.”

“So,” says the King, “allow me to present you with the dowry offer.” The King slides a piece of parchment across the table to Patrick.

“The what?” Patrick asks quizzically, his hands cupped around his coffee as he blows on it.

“For you to marry Amora.”

Patrick chokes violently on the coffee he’d just sipped. So violently that the servant who had been serving him takes it upon himself to whack Patrick on the back.

The King and the Princess stare at him.

“Sorry,” Patrick wheezes, wiping at the tears in his eyes and trying to catch his breath. “The what now?”

“Amora has taken a shine to you,” the King says. “And I cannot say, given the breadth of your land holdings, that I disagree with her choice. I am sure you will find the dowry acceptable and the wedding can take place next week.”

Patrick stares at the King.

The King says sternly, “Here’s where you say, ‘Thank you, Your Majesty, for the great honor of marrying your daughter.’”

Patrick can’t say that. Patrick can’t say fucking _anything_. Patrick looks around the dining room and suddenly decides he must be dreaming. This has all been a dream. Or maybe he really did drown in the river. He slaps himself across the face, just to try to snap himself out of it.

The King blinks at him but stays right there in front of him, so apparently that accomplished nothing.

“My lord Marquis,” the King begins, his tone clipped in displeasure.

Patrick stands so quickly he knocks his chair over completely. “I have to…”

“What do you think you’re doing?” the King demands.

“I have to wake up,” Patrick gasps nonsensically.

“Wake up?” echoes the King.

“Give me a second,” Patrick says, and flees the room.

There are servants everywhere in this fucking castle, but none of them are Pete, and Patrick is losing his temper and panicking. “Where’s Pete?” he demands of them, and off their blank looks he snaps, “ _My_ servant, the one who came with me and did whatever with the ogre.” His panic is reaching epic proportions, maybe he really did imagine Pete, what is even fucking going _on_ , the King wants him to _marry his daughter_ , he is a _miller’s son_ , and not even a very good one. Good son, or good miller. Either one.

Finally, finally, someone points him outside, toward the stables, and Patrick stumbles down a little incline toward an outbuilding. The stables are dark and horses stick their heads out over the stalls, nickering at him softly as he runs through, shouting for Pete. He plunges out the other end, still no Pete, and then spots him perched on a broad rock, looking out over the valley.

“Pete!” Patrick calls frantically, and Pete turns to look at him as he slips and slides his way along the damp grass leading to Pete’s boulder.

“Careful,” Pete says, catching him as he gets there. He looks alarmed. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“The fucking King,” Patrick pants. He can’t catch his breath enough to say the nonsense that has just occurred.

Pete’s feline eyes narrow at him. “What did he do to you?”

Patrick shakes his head, hyperventilating.

“What did he do?” Pete snarls, and Patrick thinks of that gouge in Pete’s cat ear. Pete would fight viciously for him, if Patrick but said the word.

Patrick manages, “He wants me to marry the Princess!”

He expects Pete to react with outraged shock. What happens is that Pete carefully shutters himself. His eyes go flat as he lets go of Patrick. “Oh,” he says, in a very even tone. “Good.”

“Good?” repeats Patrick. “ _Good_? What the fuck are you talking about? This isn’t good!”

Pete lifts an eyebrow at him. “It’s not good? Patrick, you’re going to be the Prince. You were a fucking miller’s son whose inheritance was a fucking stray cat who wandered by one day. And you’re complaining about vaulting to the top of the fucking heap? You’ve got a castle here. You’ve ridden in a carriage. You’ve got music to command whenever you want it. This is everything you wanted, this is everything you could possibly have wished for, that boy who sat on that bluff and wished for great things, _look what I fucking gave you_.” Pete is _furious_ , his tail flicking free of the cloak so it can lash back and forth, he’s quivering with rage.

It sparks answering rage in Patrick. He’s also fucking bewildered but anger, well, that’s something he can get behind, sure. “Who asked you for that?” he demands. “I didn’t ask you for this. I didn’t want any of this. I _don’t_ want it. I never wanted to be fucking Marquis of Carabas, you _stupid kitten_.”

Pete makes a sound startlingly like a yowl and bites out, “How _dare_ you? Last night you said this was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for you!”

“I didn’t mean—I meant the _music_. I don’t give a fuck about the rest of this!”

“You’ve always wanted to ride in a carriage.”

“It was hot and dusty and made me feel sick.”

“You love the baths.”

“This is all beside the point!” Patrick cries. “I can’t marry the Princess, is what I’m telling you!”

“Why not? She’s pretty, and she’s smitten with you.”

“I can’t marry the Princess when I’m in love with you!” Patrick shouts.

There is silence. Pete blinks at him. And then Pete shakes his head wildly. “No, no,” he says. “No, you’re not. You’re not in love with me.”

Patrick is too shocked to say anything for a moment. He stares at Pete. And then he finds his voice. “What? Of course I’m in love with you.”

“You’re not. I’m just the first person who was ever nice to you, and you think that means you love me, but it doesn’t,” Pete says desperately, “it doesn’t, you can do so much better, this is what I’m trying to tell you, you’ve got the _Princess_.”

Patrick shakes his head, perplexed. “No. I love you. The whole time I’m with her, I just miss _you_. I know I’m young and not as smart as you—”

“Patrick—”

“—but I know how I feel, I love you so much I can’t _breathe_ when I look at you, you know that, I want to scream ‘I love you’ from the top of my lungs—”

“Patrick, _stop it_ ,” Pete commands achingly. “Stop it. Look at me.” He sweeps his hat off and twitches his cat ears forward. “Really look at me, Patrick.”

Patrick really looks at him. Patrick reaches out and traces the tip of his finger gently over Pete’s scarred right ear. “Why don’t you think I’ve been looking at you this whole time?” he asks tenderly.

Pete closes his eyes. He’s trembling all over, top to bottom, his teeth caught in his lower lip.

“Pete,” Patrick whispers.

“I’m a _cat_ , Patrick,” Pete says shakily, still trembling, not opening his eyes.

“You’re just Pete,” Patrick corrects him.

Pete shakes his head. “No. You’ve got to get it into your head. I’m mostly a cat. Watch.” And then Pete’s a cat.

Patrick frowns at the dark gray tomcat in front of him with the scarred ear. “Showy,” he says. “Change back.”

Pete the cat shakes his cat-head and twitches his whiskers and sits stubbornly on the rock.

“Oho,” Patrick says. “Two can play at this game, kitty.” And then he picks Pete up in his arms.

Pete struggles, yowling at him furiously and trying to scratch him.

“Idiot,” Patrick mutters at him, carrying him up to the castle.

He meets the Princess just inside the door, who says hesitantly, “My lord Marquis, I was wondering if we could talk.”

Pete squirms vociferously in his arms, trying to wriggle out of them completely. Patrick catches him so tightly against him that he squawks in protest.

“What’s wrong with your cat?” the Princess asks, eyeing him warily.

“He’s an asshole,” Patrick says matter-of-factly.

Pete says, “ _Mrowr_ ,” and swipes Patrick’s hat off his head.

“Okay,” says the Princess slowly.

“Hang on,” Patrick says. “I’ve got to go dump him in a flea bath.”

Pete hisses at him, baring his teeth.

Patrick ignores him, marching up the stairs with him screeching his head off. Servants cast them curious looks, but Patrick ignores them, too. He carries Pete into his bedroom and drops him to the floor. Pete, the fur on his back standing straight up in irritation, hisses at him again and stalks off to the other side of the room.

“Guess what,” Patrick informs him savagely. “Until you grow up and admit you’re really a human I love a lot, I’m locking you in this room. This room you can get out of whenever you want, because you’re a _person_.”

Pete scratches his claws through the blankets hanging off of Patrick’s bed, giving Patrick a murderous look as he does so.

“Suit yourself, puss,” Patrick says, shrugging, and closes the door on him.

He hears Pete scratch against the door, yowling in protest, and he ignores him. Sooner or later Pete will get sick of this and turn back into a human and then they’ll have a mature conversation. Until then, Patrick’s keeping him locked up to teach him a lesson.

The Princess is waiting at the bottom of the stairs, looking somewhat astonished.

“Is everything okay?” she asks.

“No,” Patrick says. “We need to talk.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “I was hoping we could.”

“Here’s a room,” Patrick says, picking one at random. It happens to be deserted, which is good. He closes the door behind him and says without preamble, “I’m super-flattered and everything but I can’t marry you because I’m in love with Pete.”

The Princess blinks at him without reaction, then says thoughtfully, “You’re in love with your cat?”

“No. Well. Kind of. He’s actually a cat-person. He can be a person, too. With a tail. Whatever he is, I love him, and probably you don’t want to marry some guy who’s in love with a cat-person. I get it. I’m not even a marquis.”

After a moment, the Princess’s lips twitch into a smile. “You don’t say,” she says drily.

This gives Patrick pause. He says intelligently, “Um.”

“You, sir, are a terrible excuse for a nobleman. The only card game you know is bullshit. Also, there’s no such thing as Babylonian jousting.”

“There…could be!” Patrick defends himself.

“Uh-huh,” says the Princess. “What’s your actual name?”

“Patrick,” he says. “My name is Patrick. Does your father know? Is he going to have me executed?”

The Princess snorts. “Oh, please, my father doesn’t notice anything. He thinks you’re a trifle odd but he’s not going to look past this truly magnificent castle. And he’s so relieved that I want to marry someone, he doesn’t care about your personality quirks.”

“But…” Patrick tips his head quizzically. “If you know I’m lying about all of this, why would you want to marry me?”

“Because, Patrick, I was hoping you and I could strike a deal. And the fact that you’re in love with your cat makes me think this is even more likely.”

“He’s not really my cat,” Patrick says awkwardly. “I don’t, like, make out with a cat.”

The Princess holds up a hand. “Don’t need to hear about your sex life, please,” she says primly.

“Right,” Patrick agrees, because _yeah_ , totally.

“I don’t want to get married,” the Princess says. “But I have to get married. So I’ve been looking for a while now for someone who doesn’t want me, who won’t care if I just spend all my time doing scientific experiments in my laboratory instead of paying attention to every tedious thing he has to say. I don’t mind you. In fact, I like you. I think you’re entertaining, and also you’re very sweet and kind, that’s written all over you. I could do so much worse than a sweet, kind, funny person. My only fear was you might want more from me than I want to give. But you don’t want any of that, do you? You want your cat.”

“He’s not my cat,” Patrick protests faintly, trying to make sense of what’s happening here.

“So here’s my proposal: Let’s get married. Let’s be friends. I’d like to meet this cat when he’s a human, which you claim happens, because it would be nice if I don’t mind sharing a roof with him, either. But the two of you can do your thing, listen to your music, catch mice, whatever it is you do for fun, as long as you don’t mind that most of the time I’m not paying attention to what you’re doing because I’ve got other things I’d rather be doing.”

“I mean,” says Patrick, turning this over in his head. “What are _you_ getting out of this?”

“I get out of my father’s house,” the Princess says. “And people stop freaking out at me that I don’t have a man to take care of me. Just so we’re clear: You’re not taking care of me. I take care of myself. You’re just who I point to and you can pretend you take care of me.”

“I’m not really capable of taking care of anyone,” Patrick says. “Who would believe that?”

“You take care of your cat,” the Princess points out.

“He takes care of me,” Patrick says.

“It doesn’t matter,” the Princess shrugs. “People will believe it because you have a penis. A nice one, too, if I was into that stuff.”

“Wow,” says Patrick. “Okay. Can we pretend that never happened?”

The Princess grins at him. “So what do you say?”

“This isn’t actually my castle,” Patrick says. “I don’t have any money.”

“I come with money,” the Princess informs him. “You never read the dowry offer.”

Patrick stares at her, letting all of this sink in. “Hang on,” he says finally. “So. Let met get this straight. You’re going to pay me, basically, to…leave you alone while I get to really be in a relationship with Pete?”

The Princess considers his summary, then nods. “Yes. That’s right.”

“And you don’t care that Pete’s a cat-person?”

“I’m relieved he’s not entirely a cat, I do admit,” the Princess says. “But why should I care if he’s a cat-person? I’m a Princess who likes science and doesn’t want to get married. We can be a house of misfits.”

“Princess,” Patrick says slowly. “I think this is a really good idea.”

“Call me Amora,” says the Princess.

***

Patrick takes the stairs two at a time and barrels into his bedroom.

Pete is still a cat, curled up on his bed primly cleaning his paws. He doesn’t even look at Patrick when he comes into the room.

“Hey,” Patrick says, closing the door and dropping onto the bed with him. “Asshole.” He tips Pete over and rubs at his belly.

Pete yowls at him and gives him the cat equivalent of a frown.

“Guess what?” says Patrick. “You and I are living in this castle together forever and ever. _Lucky us_.”

Pete bats at Patrick’s hand.

“Amora says it’s totally okay for me to keep fucking my cat,” Patrick continues.

Pete’s whiskers twitch at him, and he rolls to get his feet back under him.

“I mean,” Patrick goes on, “I told her you were a cat- _person_ , and she’d really like to meet you, and in the meantime I think this is all going to work out, she just wants some cover because she’s a scientist, she seems pretty cool actually. So, you should stop this dramatic tantrum you’re throwing and be a person again so you can charm Amora and we can get on with the rest of our lives. I’m going to marry her next week.”

Pete the cat stares at him for a moment, and then Pete’s a human next to him again.

“There you are,” Patrick says, pleased.

“Hang on,” says Pete. “What are you even _talking_ about? This Princess told you that you could keep fucking your _cat_?”

“She doesn’t want to marry me, Pete. Not really. She just has to get married. And I’m a good candidate. An even better candidate because I’m in love with you, so I won’t mind that she doesn’t love me.”

“And she doesn’t mind that her husband is in love with someone else?” Pete asks incredulously.

Patrick shakes his head, smiling. “She _prefers_ it. See? Isn’t this great? Look how well this turned out. So now you can stop sulking and come and meet Amora.”

“No. Patrick. Think about this. This is all yours, okay? This is _yours_. You don’t need me for this. This is _you_. I can move on. It’s fine.”

Patrick sits up on the bed, alarmed. “What? No. You promised you’d never let me go anywhere without you ever again. You’re my cat. I’m your human.”

“Right, but you’re so fantastic. I’m frightened you don’t realize how amazing you are. I don’t want to hold you back. You could do anything.”

“Pete.” Patrick knocks Pete’s hat off his head so he can scratch behind his ears. “I only ever feel that way when I’m with you. You do the opposite of holding me back. Stop this now, okay? I want to scream ‘I love you’ from the top of my lungs. I didn’t write that. _You_ wrote that. So do it. Let everyone hear you. You can. You’re allowed to love. You’re allowed to be loved back. You’re cursed to be part-cat. You weren’t cursed to spend the rest of your life alone.”

Pete, after a second, with a sound like a sob, surges forward to bury his head against Patrick, rubbing into his shoulder. “I love you,” he gasps, clutching Patrick close. “I love you, I love you. You’re every single thing I want, that I gave up on so long ago, I just _love you_.”

Patrick puts his cheek against Pete’s head and closes his eyes. “Stay with me,” he whispers. “I want to live happily ever after.”

Pete starts purring.

***

In six months of married life, Patrick has never been in Amora’s laboratory. It’s her space and he tries not to intrude upon it. Most of the time he’s in the conservatory anyway, teaching himself the vast array of instruments this castle holds. Or he goes to find Pete in the library, where Pete is working his way voraciously through all the poetry in the world, and then feeding his own lines back to Patrick for the songs Patrick writes. They all overlap at dinner, when Amora will try to make them understand the experiments she’s been working on all day and Patrick will sing Pete’s poetry.

Patrick can’t believe how well it all works, how nicely their household meshes together, how they play cards after dinner and Amora teaches them all the card games she knows and Pete teaches them all the drinking games he knows and they blend them together and laugh into the evening and then Patrick takes Pete upstairs and makes him purr all night, and Patrick’s been thinking a lot lately of how far he’s come, of how his old life feels like a dream he had.

And in these six months, naturally, he’s learned more about Pete’s past. He’s learned about the witch who cursed Pete after he foolishly conned her out of a couple of jewels. He’s learned about the fight early on that gave Pete his scarred ear, and sent him off into a lonely existence where it was better not to get too close to people who might react poorly. He’s learned most of all about Pete’s family, because Pete remembers a lot about them, and remembers all of it fondly. Pete has a brother and a sister and parents and they loved him very much and Pete blames himself a great deal for being a stupid kid who ran away from home over a disagreement about whether Pete should take over the family business and then he never went back. Patrick listens to Pete talk about his family, and Patrick thinks and thinks.

And Patrick knocks on the open door of Amora’s lab.

Amora looks up from whatever she’s doing. She’s wearing glasses like Patrick’s, only they’re to protect her eyes, and she lifts them up and back onto her head at the sight of him. “Patrick,” she says pleasantly. “What brings you up here?”

“Is it okay I’m here?” he asks uncertainly.

“Of course. It doesn’t bother me. Did you want to try your hand at some experiments?” she asks eagerly.

“Um,” says Patrick, and looks at what Amora’s working on. It seems like she’s dissecting a worm. “Not…really,” he admits.

“That’s okay,” she says cheerfully, and pushes the worm guts aside. “What’s up?”

“You’ve done…so much for us,” Patrick says, “so I really hate to ask for anything more—”

“You’ve done so much for _me_ ,” Amora counters. “Let’s call it even.”

“Okay,” Patrick agrees. “Anyway, this isn’t for me. This is for Pete.”

Amora looks concerned. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. He just… He had a family. This family he really loves and who really loved him. And then he ran away and got turned into a cat and he never went back to them because Pete really is embarrassed about being a cat-person.”

“I don’t know why,” Amora says. “He has a lovely tail. He makes me want to have a tail.”

“Right?” says Patrick, because he thinks that a lot about Pete’s tail. “I don’t know. He’s weird about it. But I was thinking, like, maybe if we could find his family, and bring them here, like, I wouldn’t _make_ Pete talk to them, but I think if they were here, then Pete would realize that…he doesn’t have to punish himself by staying away from them. I don’t know. Do you think it’s inappropriate?”

“I think you probably don’t want to trap him into doing a thing he doesn’t want to do. But I could definitely track his family down and extend an invitation to get them to town, and maybe he could decide if he wants to go the rest of the way.”

Patrick nods. That sounds right to him.

“What do you know about his family?” Amora asks. “How will we find them?”

“His dad is a canonist,” Patrick says.

“Oh,” Amora says. “Excellent. Canonists have to be licensed. We’ll track him down easily.”

“Thank you,” Patrick tells her sincerely. “I really appreciate this.”

“No problem,” Amora replies, smiling. “What’s the point of being married to a princess, right?”

Even with Amora’s help, Patrick is startled how quickly the plan comes to fruition. Patrick supposes no one ignores an invitation from the Princess of the kingdom. Amora invites them to town where she is going to present Pete’s father with a fake award she came up with. The real point, of course, is to get them close enough to tempt Pete to go talk to them.

Patrick is very nervous about the whole thing. This was a terrible idea. He should have asked Pete first. And Pete would have said no, of course. Pete is going to be livid with him.

“What’s up with you, darling hummingbird?” Pete asks when Patrick keeps pacing around the library.

“I’ve done something,” Patrick blurts out.

“Okay,” says Pete. “Something like you lost the last batch of lyrics I gave you, or something like the scullery maid?”

Patrick sits opposite him in one of the luxurious chairs that somehow Patrick now _owns_. “I want to remind you that you love me very much.”

“Oh, fuck,” Pete says in alarm, “did you do the scullery maid?”

“ _No_ , I didn’t – _Pete_ – your family is staying in the village.”

Pete goes very still on the sofa.

Patrick keeps talking. “They don’t know you’re here. I had Amora invite them to the village to give your dad an award for being such a good canonist. I wanted them to be near here so you could decide if you wanted to go see them—”

“ _What_?” says Pete. “Of course I don’t want to go see them! Why would you do this? You know I don’t want to see them!”

“No,” Patrick interjects quietly. “I know you don’t want _them_ to see _you_. I kind of think you miss them a lot.”

Pete’s mouth is open in rebuttal, but he gets nothing out. He shuts his mouth. His tail swishes uncertainly. Pete is never covered up in this castle. Pete is _himself_ in this castle. Patrick was insistent upon it. Pete was worried, but the servants barely notice anymore.

“You don’t have to see them,” Patrick continues. “Like I said, they don’t know you’re here. We can go into the village incognito and you can just see if maybe you might want to—”

“Who came?” Pete asks suddenly. “Just my mom and dad?”

“I think so,” Patrick says. “I don’t know.”

Pete chews on his lower lip and looks off toward the windows with their view of the valley. Then he says sharply to Patrick, “Maybe. I’m not going to talk to them. I’ll just go see them and make sure they’re okay.”

“Okay,” Patrick agrees. “You want me to come?”

Pete nods.

Pete goes to the village as a cat. Patrick doesn’t argue with him because it’s a huge step that Pete is going to the village to see his parents at all. He consents to letting Patrick carry him until they get to the inn, and then he jumps down from Pete’s arms and walks in like he owns the place. Because the cat is followed in by the Prince of the kingdom, no one says anything about the cat showing up in the inn.

The inn is crowded with people for the evening meal, and Pete stalks through the crowd like he’s hunting, and then stops at the edge of the crowd, looking fixedly at an older couple at a table in the corner. They’re laughing with each other, clearly enjoying their holiday in the village, and Patrick can see the resemblance to Pete. Pete has his mother’s smile, his father’s amber eyes, only more cat-ified. Pete’s tail wavers in the air behind him, uncertainly.

Patrick leans down and picks him up, which Pete allows. He strokes Pete’s back soothingly and says, “They look nice.”

Pete butts his head against Patrick’s chin.

“I can go say hi to them,” Patrick offers.

Pete, after a moment, says, “Mrowr,” and butts at Patrick’s chin again.

Patrick takes this for a yes, because Pete would have shaken his head otherwise, so Patrick heads over to the table.

The couple is still laughing at a private joke as he interrupts them, and they look up at him happily.

“Hello,” he says. “Forgive my interruption. I’m Patrick. I’m the Prince.” Patrick’s learned people will let him get away with anything once he says that.

“Oh!” they exclaim, getting up so they can bow and curtsy and say _your highness_ at him.

“Please don’t,” Patrick says. “I just wanted to congratulate you on your award, sir. Very well deserved, my wife tells me.”

Pete’s dad looks charmingly modest, a look Pete has never achieved in his entire life. Patrick’s going to tease him about that later. “Oh, thank you. It was so unexpected but delightful.”

“Plus, we love to see new places,” Pete’s mom says. “We always love new places.”

“My wife is an adventurer,” Pete’s dad says fondly.

“I know the type,” Patrick smiles, and scratches under Pete’s chin.

“Ah,” says Pete’s dad to him knowingly. “They make life better, don’t they?”

“They do,” Patrick agrees, because that is definitely a true statement. “Never a dull moment. The world needs more of them. Your children, for instance…?”

“Yes, our son Pete is that way,” Pete’s dad says, and Patrick doesn’t miss the present tense there.

Neither does Pete, suddenly tense in his arms.

“Takes after me,” Pete’s mom sighs. “The other two have always been content, but that one ran away to seek his fortune.”

“And did he find it?” Patrick asks carefully.

“We like to think so,” says Pete’s dad.

“Yes,” his mother says firmly. “He definitely did.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then Patrick says, “I’m sure he did. I’m sure he’s very happy, and very loved.”

Pete’s mother looks at him. “What a very kind thing to say, your Highness. Thank you.”

Pete, later, in their bedroom in the castle, says sarcastically, “Really smooth bringing their children up, Marquis,” and crawls into bed.

“Well,” Patrick says, undoing his cravat, “I didn’t want it to be a wasted trip. They seem very lovely, Pete.” He hesitates. “They seem like they miss you,” he adds gently.

Pete says nothing for a moment, then speaks into his pillow. “Can we invite them to the castle?”

“Yes,” Patrick says. “Of course we can.” Patrick gets into bed and lets Pete curl up, head on his chest, in their standard sleeping arrangement.

“You don’t think I’m a disappointment?” he says after a moment. “I mean, if _you_ were their son, yeah, sure, look how you’ve ended up. But—”

“Pete, you’re amazing, and if they think you’re a disappointment, I’ll have them thrown out of the kingdom.”

“Challenge them to a Babylonian joust, Marquis,” offers Pete.

“Shut up,” says Patrick, and the next day he sends a formal invitation to Pete’s parents for dinner at the castle.

Pete panics at the last minute and refuses to come down for dinner, so Patrick has to enlist Amora to help him entertain, who doesn’t mind because she’s fascinated to meet Pete’s parents. Also, Amora is voraciously interested in all things and talks canon law with Pete’s dad all dinner. Patrick, bored, eventually suggests to Pete’s mom that maybe she would like a tour of the castle, and he ends up in the conservatory, showing off his instruments.

“My son Pete,” she says, touching the pianoforte, “he loves music. He had a horrible voice, but he was always singing.” She laughs fondly at the memory.

“He _does_ have a horrible voice,” Patrick agrees unthinkingly, then freezes.

Pete’s mom says, “What?”

And then Pete says softly from the doorway, “Mom.”

Patrick, surprised by his entrance, looks over to him, so he misses his mother’s reaction, until the moment when she dashes across the expanse of the room and flings herself onto Pete, and then she is crying and Pete is crying and Patrick stands awkward in the face of all this emotion.

Amora arrives with Pete’s dad.

Pete’s dad says, “What’s all this?” and then, “ _Pete_?” and then joins the crying tangle.

Amora comes over to Patrick and watches the spectacle for a moment and then says, “Well. Don’t you think your boyfriend probably needs a hug?”

“He’s with his family,” Patrick says. “I don’t want to bother him.”

“Patrick.” Amora gives him a look. “In what universe are you not part of Pete’s family?”

And that’s when Pete says suddenly, “Patrick, Patrick, you have to meet Patrick,” and bounds over to Patrick and tugs him in. “Oh, also, Amora, that’s the Princess, she’s great, too,” says Pete, and Amora waves from the edge of the crowd, “but this is _Patrick_ ,” Pete finishes proudly.

“The Prince?” Pete’s mom says.

“It’s a little complex,” Patrick says. “Our life is a little complex.”

“Our life is perfect,” Pete says. “Our life is so perfect. It really is. Stay so I can tell you…everything?”

“Pete.” Pete’s mom cups her hand against his cheek and says tearfully, “Look how happy you are.” Her eyes shift to Patrick. “Very happy, and very loved,” she echoes his words deliberately.

Patrick says truthfully, feeling absurdly like he might cry as well, “He’s so impossibly well loved.”

“Not more than Patrick is,” Pete counters.

“They have constant quarrels over who loves who more,” Amora contributes.

“No, we don’t,” Patrick says. “Only sometimes. They’re not constant.”

“Tell us everything,” Pete’s mom says.

Pete says, “Once upon a time, I was given to this miller’s son.” Pete pauses, and looks at Patrick, and smiles. “And then we lived happily ever after.”

 


End file.
